


plain hearts do in the faces rest

by mysticalmuddle



Series: in whom love wrought new alchemy [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Brother/Sister Incest, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hand Feeding, Reunions, Unresolved Romantic Tension, mostly comfort/little hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:54:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26618530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysticalmuddle/pseuds/mysticalmuddle
Summary: Arya comes home.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Arya Stark
Series: in whom love wrought new alchemy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932769
Comments: 36
Kudos: 127
Collections: Jonrya Week: Sweet and Spicy Summer





	plain hearts do in the faces rest

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings: Discussion of canon-typical violence, including allusions to sexual assault. No characters were actually assaulted, on or off screen.**
> 
> The tone of this is vastly different from part one, and it can be read as a stand-alone. The prompt was _revelation_.

> I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I  
>  Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?  
>  But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?  
>  Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?  
>  ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.  
>  If ever any beauty I did see,  
>  Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

  


### plain hearts do in the faces rest

His eyes ached, from the candlelight and the late hour and his own dragging tiredness. Jon had gone straight to his solar from the stable yard, dismissing his squire on the way, and was still grimy under his clothes with dust and sweat and the dampness left by melted snow that was even now still leeching down from the sky. T’was uncouth, unfit for a prince to be in such a state, and damned uncomfortable, but the near-eve of war was no time for a man to discover a penchant for fussiness.

Besides, t’was little matter the state of his body, had he but the numbers fresh in his head when he’d spread out the maps and looked again.

He’d knocked the worst of the muddy snow from his boots, and toweled his hair dry enough that he wouldn’t drip across the maps, and like that, had bent to his work. That had been hours ago. There was a tray somewhere between then and now—untouched; he’d been too busy to eat—and a handful of runners with parchment squares, messages for his eyes only and folded tight, but mostly the decline into this late ugly hour had been the grit of his teeth and the spread of the maps, weighted down by tokens and ink pots and stones.

Planning a war was more difficult than planning a siege or a single battle. Jon scattered one last palmful of fine sand across wet ink, his own spidery handwriting crossing and recrossing the pages, and sat back to rub his knuckles across his eyes.

There was never a moment of the day where his own tight-packed fear, the nagging world of preparations, was overwhelmed by aught else. His mind was busy on the maps, or seeing that all the men knew and did their duties, or to sending the ravens that flew out so endlessly to call the other houses to arms, those small few that’d listen.

A king could rest when he liked, but a regent shouldn’t see to himself less his king ordered him to. And Bran, so far and faint even as he called some nights through a raven’s throat, wouldn’t dare to turn his older brother from this.

The price of Jon’s princehood had been too high. He’d spend the rest of his life paying it back to those other Starks, those Starks by birth, if he lived past the war at all. Then, he would let himself rest. Until that day, save for the first hour after the nightbell and the two he took in the yard every morning—those things keeping him barely sane—there was this.

But Jon was just a man, and he felt his own tiredness catch and drag at him, threatening to pull him under cold and heavy waves where he could no more think than a drowning man could think.

Enough, he thought and shoved his chair away, rising. The day’s work was done, the plans amended to include four thousand men from the Riverlands, all the men Lord Mallister could muster and all of them now camping in Castle Cerwyn’s bare fields. 

Tomorrow there would be more men, and more numbers, and the return of Lady Mormont and Lord Glover, and gods hoped they brought better news of Dreadfort’s current state. But tonight every thought came through him like through a veil, and every step fell like pacing in bare feet across scattered shards of dragonglass.

T’was an hour before the night bell, or a little less. T’was a chance that the sitting lord of Highgarden had taken time from his busy schedule of being sieged to write back, or that whatever lord that held Skagos had returned the last raven rather than eating it, or that there was another stiff-polite letter from the Eyrie, Baelish’s words in Sansa’s careful hand. 

Jon had ordered that he be not disturbed; outside the door, a pack of pages huddled into each other for warmth, the heavy hoods of their cloaks up and their shoulders all crammed together. There wasn’t enough wood to fire the hearths in the hallways and it was bitter cold all across the keep for it.

His irritation spiked. A dozen of them, at least, not a one of them older than Bran, and all of them exhausted; dark half-moons gathered under each pair of eyes. He’d told Lord Flint that keeping the children up so late in the cold was cruel. There was no rule that whoever held the castle set his household’s schedule. “All of you to bed,” Jon ordered before their thin child’s voices could start with the piping chorus of, _My lord! My lord!_

They at least had been convinced not to call him _Your Grace_. “Tomorrow,” Jon snapped as they all scrambled to stand at attention. At the flinches they gave, he gentled his voice to say, “Can all of you remember your messages until tomorrow?”

The tallest of the lot, with another boy—much smaller—huddled under the fanned out edge of his cloak like a pup to its mother’s side, said, “Yes, my lord!” with a fist laid in salute across his chest.

The hour was late. To start some new business now was to forsake the hour after the bell. “Give them to be me then,” Jon ordered. His eyes ached, though he kept his hands at his sides this time. “No,” he said, not ungently when another boy made to speak. “Tomorrow, and until then, all of you are to go to bed.”

He waited where he was, his shoulders hunching against the cold, until they’d all shuffled off and turned the corner. They were going down to the hall, where everyone not ranked well enough to warrant a room—and the firewood to heat it—was packed in with furs and blankets and pallets. Jon’s own path was the same, and he didn’t want the lot of them stumbling and tripping after him the entire time.

The panes of leaded glass, far at the end of the corridor, had long been broken, and only recently when the cold made his hands shake too much to write, had they been covered over with rough-cut boards. Wind pushed the snow to snaking past the cracks left until it was leaking onto the floor in crystalline white spills. The candles set in their narrow creches, one at each end of the hall, threatened to gutter with every moaning thrust of the wind.

Same as he’d put out the fire to save the wood, Jon pinched the wicks to stop them burning and navigated the short flight of stairs in the familiar dark.

He might have depended on borrowing Ghost’s eyes to keep from stumbling or tripping, but the wolf had left the gates early in the wet grey morning six days past, turning towards the south and whatever snow-starved prey he might find there. Jon went slowly instead, pretending that it was only the dark that made each footstep a drag far harder than it should have been and not the ache of his own snow-starved body.

He was weary in a way no sleep could solve, and he had no hope for consolation. With every late hour, with every day that passed, he was growing more and more certain there would be no rest, not until they chiseled a space for him in the rock of the crypts.

If Jon yet still had some secret hope for this day to lay long ahead, for his hair to be grey and his face worn, for a second space to be patiently carved beside his and left waiting a few years more, it was his business alone.

There was no rest to be had. He wasn’t a surprise that Ser Florent and Lord Stout were arguing just outside the door to the hall, nor that they both shut up at once and turned appealingly towards him. They were huddled close as his pages had been, despite the sour looks they gave each other. Winter made strange bedfellows, and t’was Jon’s job to keep them together, yet not so close that they cut each others’ throats.

There was no way to describe Jon’s relief, to learn that Bran was alive. Like a breath, mayhaps, after a long time underwater and pained for air. Too, he’d felt it for Rickon and Sansa, to hear that they were safe and hidden away. But mostly Bran’s safety had overwhelmed him, had bid him grab at the back of the carved stone seat and sink down slowly onto it.

Jon’s joy and relief that his little brother was still alive—that Theon Greyjoy had failed to slaughter him, that Bran was safe wherever he was beyond the Wall—was for love of him alone. 

Jon’s private fervent hope that Bran returned to Winterfell soon, in his own body and not the croaky sullen raven that Lord Commander Mormont had left alive, was that Jon need be Regent now but he wouldn’t be king forever.

“Can this not wait?” he asked. His voice was rusty from disuse. There were more torches here, and the warm air that crept into the corridor from the hall, packed full as it was of fireplaces and living bodies. 

Warm air, almost hot air, across his face as a serving woman passed them by and went into the hall. He turned to the draft on instinct. Jon could even forgive the reek of unwashed bodies that came with it.

“I’m sorry, my lord, but it cannot,” Ser Florent said, always grave. He gave a short sharp bow, which sent Lord Stout bristling. “Queen Selyse—”

“ _Lady_ Selyse,” Lord Stout interrupted.

“Her Grace Queen Selyse seeks to speak with you,” Florent went on, affronted. He jostled his arm before Lord Stout’s, a boarhound before a boulder, and lifted his chin to say, “At your earliest convenience, my lord.”

If Jon could place shy Shireen Baratheon upon the throne as easily as a man might take an apple from a tree, and strike down her opposition at the very same moment, in a clean easy blow, he might just do it. Not just for the reinforcements it promised them, but for want to be rid of her mother.

Jon’d had no mother of his own, but Selyse Baratheon’s stalwart and insistent manner toward her daughter’s birthright, despite Stannis’ untimely death, showed the sort of loyalty and tiger-fierce love that he thought a mother should have. And though there was nothing girlish about her, that proud clenched jaw and refusal to bow away reminded him of a girl he’d once known. But that didn’t mean he wished to spend any more of his waking hours soothing her and detailing what efforts they were making to the south.

Ravens came from Highgarden that Daenerys Targaryen had landed in Westeros and marched from Dorne with three dragons—three miracles—that Jon sorely needed. He wouldn’t insult her by presenting another challenge to the throne she wanted to reclaim, nor would he risk sending Shireen to another hungry fire when she’d just barely escaped Melidandre’s red flames.

“Tell Queen Selyse I’ll speak to her on the morrow,” he ordered, and flipped the hood of his own cloak above his head, before braving the door to the yard.

He hoped the cold and the dark would dissuade them from following. Winterfell’s gates were kept open now at night with men ready at the chains ready to lower them at the first cry. Access to those soldiers and lords camping outside the sturdy walls couldn’t be denied, and torches and braziers burned in smoking shades across the yard in paltry effort to appease the guard-numbers needed to man the castle in the night.

Jon turned by long habit towards the Godswood, then forced himself to turn towards the Maester’s Tower instead. It wasn’t time yet, he told himself, and Jon knew his own weaknesses maybe even better than his strengths.

If he gave in and went to the Godswood now, breaking at last that control that kept him at his duties, he’d sink down to pray before the heart tree and not rise again until the old gods had answered his choking calls.

The wagon promised a diversion if the rookery did not. He _had_ a castellan, who could come deal with the wain just now rolling under the gates and the men—bright in House Locke’s white and purple—crowing and calling from their horses beside it. But a man need know his keep, and in winter he need know _exactly_ the numbers it took to feed everyone in it.

Lord Stout was still stuck to his heels, like a frozen bit of horseshit, and Ser Florent with the grim mien of a man unwilling to turn and face his mistress. “Lord Ryswell also needs your attention, Your Grace” Lord Stout pressed. “He claimed the matter is most urgent.”

“Then he might have come himself,” Jon snapped. The title riled him; his dark look sent Lord Stout quailing back a step. Jon was regent alone, not king; Robb’s will hadn’t accounted that Bran and Rickon yet lived and Jon could no more stand in the way of his trueborn siblings than he could take up Longclaw and hack off his own hand.

Never mind that he’d joined them when he hadn’t done aught to deserve it. Jon had what he’d always wanted, and it was a bitter cup indeed.

“Perhaps, _my lord_ ,” Ser Florent said, “the Queen is more meritous of your attention? She will be most wroth to have her order ignored—”

The wain and its outriders were indeed being directed to the kitchen yard, Jon was pleased to see. One of the men had pulled the cover off the back, protection from the falling snow, and the sacks and barrels it revealed were piled high. Beans, and peas, and onions; perhaps even dried meat. Another week’s guarantee that Winterfell wouldn’t starve.

“My lord—” 

“Your Grace—”

And now come straggling through the gate, a half-starved horse and a child clinging to its broad, wasted neck, both of them wracked with shivers in the cold.

It hurt his heart, as it did every time, to see northern refugees as they wandered into Winterfell in stumbling little groups, or on their own. It hurt his heart and made clear to Jon why it was so important that Winterfell remain standing, its lanterns lit and its gates raised, that there still be servants to make space for more pallets in the hall, and the thick bowls of soup to be handed out to those coming in cold and desperate and hungry.

It made clear why he couldn’t rest, just yet, not when there was so much left to do.

This winter was grim, and the looming war promised to make it grimmer yet, but Winterfell was still standing, there was a Stark inside it again, and though the child came now wasted and freezing, he’d be warmed and fed soon enough.

Jon’s body ached and the cold made the aching worse; tension crowded tight in his back and arms, and soreness colonized in his legs. Ser Florent and Lord Stout were arguing with each other again, hissing vicious whispers. Jon ducked his head against the drifting snowy wind, turning towards the Maester’s Tower, and made his way across the yard.

He need pass the child to get there, and he heard as he drew closer the guard who’d grabbed at the drooping reins saying patiently, “You can’t see the king, lad. He don’t see petitioners, he’s too busy. If there’s news to be passed, of your parents or your lord, Lord Flint can see you.”

The child, who’d come through the gate looking as if he might fall from his horse at any moment, mustered the strength now to straighten and demand in a thin, affronted voice, “King? What king? Robb Stark’s the _only_ King in the North, and he’s dead!”

His voice held a hint of despair, of blooming hysteria. Some mountain clan? Jon thought. But no, the boy had come from the south gate, the kingsroad gate. He hadn’t thought there were people left south of Winterfell that hadn’t heard of its retaking, and Jon’s place within it. There were men camped all the way to Castle Cerwyn. Surely one of them had told the child—

“Aye,” the guard was saying, gently. “And now Good King Robb’s brother has the crown. But it should matter little to you, then he’s a good man like his father. Aye, we’re under Starks again. You’re safe, lad. Come down from there now. You look done in.”

The child swayed a little, silent, the horse shifting unhappily under him. Jon didn’t like to disturb them; he stilled his steps and waited, shifting himself to keep the cold from leeching too badly into his boots.

“We’ll see to your horse,” the guard coaxed, trading the reins to his other hand, trying to come around to the side, that he could help the child down. “The chatelaine will give you a bowl of brown, and some place warm to sleep. You’re safe now, alright? Alright, here—”

The wind died down, just enough for Jon to hear clearly the next words, without the powder-soft muffle and strange snatch of sound through hard-falling snow.

“His brother,” the child said, a soft pained choke, a voice as thin and brittle as spring-time ice. “Bran, oh gods,” and it was almost a sob. “Bran Stark is dead, too. Theon Turncloak killed him.”

It struck Jon, where he stood. It struck him hard as a hammer blow across his face, and he reeled back a step with it. He knew that voice. _He knew that voice_. He knew it laughing and scared and wroth and sweet and—

From very far away, from half a step behind him, “Your Grace,” Lord Stout began again as Ser Florent pressed, “My lord,” and Jon left them to fight over titles he didn’t want, titles he didn’t care about.

The boy—the _girl_ —was still a-horse, her body a shadow as thin as a whip in the torchlight. The guard was saying, coaxing and kind, “Prince Bran still lives, boy. Those Starks are hard to kill—” and the girl cried over him, a raw cry from a raw throat, “Who holds this castle? Who holds it! The name!”

_I do_ , and the words refused to leave him. Cold wind snaked down Jon’s throat instead; it came back up fire. Feeling as if he were in a dream, he croaked out, “Arya.”

It left him loud, burning. The girl turned, and Jon saw for only the barest moment, a single heartbeat’s time, the long pale face and the familiar pale eyes and the dark hair clinging close to her head, dusted almost white by the falling snow. 

A spirit, she looked like. A dream. A night creature, Jon thought, come to haunt him and caw about his sins. 

And then she moved, and she was a girl again. Warm, but for the snow. Breathing in little pants that shook her whole body. She jerked back as if struck, crying out the thin wounded sound a rabbit made as it died arrow-struck. And then she fainted.

If asked ten minutes before, Jon would have said himself incapable of running, so exhausted and pained as he was. Now he was across the yard as if the wind itself blew him. It was a century’s time before he caught her; it was a heartbeat before he was folding her limp body into the shelter of his arms. He caught her up so carefully and turned her slide from her saddle to a slow, cradled draw against his chest.

_Arya_. Gods, and it was her, skinnier than he had ever seen, filthy—there was something smeared all across her furs—mud until the scent hit him, even through the snow and the frozen air. _Blood_ , and she was caked in it like she’d found a puddle of the stuff, laid down, and rolled.

She was so light in his arms, like a dream. Like the furs were all that weighed her. He had another second’s worth of dizzy panic—he was dreaming, she was a ghost he could no more hold than he could hold sunlight—and then she started shivering. 

Never in her life had Arya fainted before. “Maester,” Jon said in a croak. The dream dissolved, milk of poppy mixed into wine. T’was the world so suddenly untrue. There was nothing real but this, this girl in his arms; men were shouting and he heard it from a great distance, footsteps racing sharp and crunching across the snow. Her horse shied, the guard saying, “Your Highness?” in deep alarm as he tried to calm it.

Jon wheeled about. Lord Florent was older, greying, slow, but he took off like a green boy at a year’s end race when Jon roared out, “Bring me the maester! Now!”

Arya was still limp weight, but for the shivers. Lord Stout was snatching his own cloak off, throwing it over Arya. Jon forbored the touch, ten seconds to tuck it better around her trembling body, and took her away to the shelter of the keep. 

There by the doors to the hall, where t’was the warmest. Someone slammed the doors themselves closed on the shouting starting within. Lord Flint was at Jon’s elbow, herding him further inside, saying, “Gods be good to us. Is that truly her? There’s a fire in the receiving room—someone take her escorts to the kitchen and see they’re warmed and fed. You, Bowen, see to it! Theomar, bring my wife!”

Arya made a small motion. She needed a fire, something hot Jon could pour down her throat, a bath. “She had no escorts,” Lord Stout was saying. “She just came through the gate—”

A screech, wood dragged on stone. “Sit down, Your Highness,” Lord Flint directed and Jon sank down carefully, tucking his girl up so her cheek rested on his shoulder, turning so the fire fell across her face. Arya, and gods, it was her for true.

Bran had said she was alive. Bran had said she wasn’t in Nymeria, that croaking raven’s voice tumbling out handfuls of confusing words. But they’d had no news, he’d had no assurances. “Where have you _been_ ,” Jon pressed to the top of her head and wiped away the snow melting in her cropped short hair.

Every breath she took was precious, a little sigh. He wanted to crush her to his chest and didn’t dare for fear of injury. Someone was shouting just outside the door, Flint and Stout crowded too close, the wind beating at the walls and the fire crackling furious, and Jon wanted, badly, for it all to go away.

Her fingers moved against his, where he’d caught both her hands in his own hand, to better warm her. Waking, soon, and he needed quiet for her. He needed peace.

“The maester’s coming,” Lord Florent said as he came through the doors, slamming them shut on the crowd gathered outside. How many of Father’s household was left? Women mostly, a handful of children now grown. There hadn’t been a single one who didn’t hold Arya dear when she was a girl—they’d want to look at her, touch her hand, marvel.

They couldn’t see her now. Lord Flint was speaking, baths and ravens, an announcement. Her fingers moved again, her cheek pressed a fraction closer. “Shut up,” Jon ordered, a growl, and everyone fell silent.

He didn’t dare move her till the maester had seen to her. Cautiously, he tucked a hand under the heavy furs across her chest; his fingers came away wet with sweat but nothing else. “Oh little sister,” Jon said, a pained whisper, and pressed his face to her filthy hair to better breathe the scent of it in. 

He felt more than saw Lord Flint as he came closer and knelt down beside them. When Jon looked up, before he could snap out anything, Lord Flint said very softly, “I can take her, Your Highness. Aye, or my wife. She’s only gone to get Lady Jeyne.”

Arya shifted against him. Was she waking? Did she hear? She’d come home to _him_. He’d let there be no doubt in her that he meant to keep her now. Jon said jealously, “I can see to her.”

He’d been a fool to order so frequently, so fervently and so often, that no distractions bother him while he worked. Jon had meant it to keep the fool lords and panicked soldiers away; now Lord Flint said nervously, “But what of your work, Your Highness?”

What _of_ his work? Jon couldn’t even remember what he’d meant to do before he’d caught Arya’s tumbling body in his arms. “Have a bath brought to my quarters,” he ordered. They could spare the wood to heat it. “And a tray—not the brown. Something else.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Lord Flint said and fell back, startled, as Arya shifted, turned further into Jon’s chest.

Her body was still. She rasped air, in and out. And then, warbling and on the edge of tears, she whispered, “Jon?”

Begged, almost. As if she didn’t believe it. As if she thought some other man would hold her so carefully, would say to her gravely, “No, I’m sorry. He isn’t here.”

He loved her so much. He’d never wanted more than this. “I’m here,” Jon said, squeezing her hands. And then so tenderly that it burned his throat, “Little sister, I’m right here.”

He hadn’t expected her to jerk in his arms, then try and throw herself to the floor. Jon followed her down, trying to keep her still. “Arya,” and she thrashed against him, “Arya, don’t—”

She wasn’t trying to get away from him, like his first panicked thought. Her hand was tight in the front of his doublet, even as she squirmed and reared back. “Arya, you’ll hurt yourself worse,” Jon said, trying to soothe her with his voice, his hands. She was coated in blood, and it _was_ blood, reeking now that she was warmer.

“You’ll hurt yourself,” he barked, fearful as she fisted both hands in his shirt and shoved him away. “Arya, please, be _still_.”

He was reaching for her again already, cupped her elbows to keep her from keeling over. They were kneeling now, staring at each other. The world slowed and dropped away again. Jon might be dreaming, with how bad he wanted it, to stay in this second for a long forever.

Not even the flickering firelight could make her a stranger. Not even the years apart could make her a stranger. Starved and filthy and grown at last into her long Stark face, this girl was still his sister and so lovely, so loved, that it hurt him to look upon her.

So long as he lived, he would never want to look away.

Her own eyes were greedy on his face. It had been so long, so much had passed—

Did she still see the boy who used to haul her to bed when she was tired, who sheltered her from her own tears, who had carried her in his heart every day, _every day_ —

“Jon,” Arya said, a low hoarse rasp. One of her hands was fisted right above his heart. “ _Jon_ ,” and her face was twisting closer and closer to tears. She let out a hiccuping breath, and said, voice cracking, “Jon, I don’t want to be dreaming anymore.”

Like it broke a dam, shattered some wall within her, she burst into frenzied tears.

He heard in all the sobbing, _I will die if this is more dreaming_. Slowly, so slowly, he shifted closer until he could cup her cheek. A thousand words cluttered his mouth, his throat. Reassurances. Promises. Her face was hot and wet and terrible with pain.

None of that meant anything—words were wind. T’wasn’t a language either of them could speak right now. With excruciating care, he folded her back into the shelter of his arms and helped her tuck her face to his neck. He helped her hide there, safe against him.

The people in the room, strangers and he felt how keenly Arya didn’t want them there, shifting uncomfortably against him, pawing clumsily closer. “The maester is coming,” Jon said and rubbed her back, trying to help soothe her through those deep racking sobs. T’was like touching rocks through a bedroll; gods but she was so skinny now. 

He wanted to calm her. He wanted to help her. If she was hurt and his touch had hurt her worse, he would break the world itself in half. “As soon as he looks you over, we can—”

“No!” and it was a wail. 

Arya had always been stubborn, had been unknowable to everyone but him in her wild heart. He should have protested, knew that his duty to her was to see her well, but she clawed at him like a frightened cat, scrambling, and he could only croon out something low and tuneless, trying to soothe.

“I don’t want a maester—” Arya wept at him, clutching him tighter and shoving her face hard against him. But under that, like a language so long unheard, she told him in cry and touch and cringe, _I don’t want a stranger_.

The urge to fold her away, to disappear her into his body itself, was so very strong. He wanted to give her whatever she wanted. “You’re bloody,” and he pressed his mouth to the side of her head, ducked to say just for her into her ear, “Tell me you’re not hurt—”

“I’m n-not,” she bawled back.

“—and mean it,” he pressed. She was brittle under his hands; he spread his fingers wide, to better hold and keep her together. “You’re covered in blood, little sister. Tell me it’s not yours.”

She shook her head, a short hard motion. T’was better, truly, that he needn’t chase and kill whoever’d done it, but his throat clenched tight all the same. Once Arya had wept to draw blood, just scratching with a ragged nail when she fought with Sansa; now she was covered in it. “Alright,” he said, “Alright,” and drew her closer, shifting that he might lift her and stand without overbalancing himself.

A world away, far from them as the Wall was from Winterfell, there was a short polite knock at the room’s door. Someone went to open it—one of those reviled strangers—and Jon heard Arya say in a very small voice, gulping as she tried to stop her tears, “I can walk.”

“Aye,” he agreed, to spare her pride, even as his hands closed tighter on her. “But,” and it was mostly truth, and she had to hear it in his voice, the fear he starved off, “I don’t think I can let go of you right now.”

He waited to see if she would object again. Jon couldn’t deny her anything; if she wanted to walk, then she would walk and he’d follow half a step behind, careful not to let her fall again. But Arya only snaked an arm about his neck, to better balance herself, and went limp.

Not fainted again. She tensed a little as Lady Flint came about his elbow and curtsied deeply to them both. “Your Highness,” the lady said in a hushed voice, like a mother afraid to wake a sleeping child, “your room has been arranged as you requested and I’ve had Her Highness’s things taken up.” 

He had a castellan for just this thing. T’was a relief, to know he wouldn’t have to turn the Flints aside and pick someone else. He had no time for things like that, now there was Arya to see to, to look after. He rubbed a hand down her back, slow, so she knew she was safe still.

Lady Flint’s eyes caught on Arya, and her face went softer still. _So thin_ , she mouthed at Jon with a mother’s worry. She added aloud, “I’ve also had broth sent up with her tray, to fortify her. She truly shouldn’t be put to bed until she’s had a bath.”

Outrage and gratitude warred. He didn’t need someone to tell him how to take care of Arya; he knew how. He’d always known how. But Lady Flint meant no harm. He said, “Aye,” and let her husband, still looking faintly stunned, open the door to the back stair. 

Their old rooms had burned. No where in Winterfell felt untouched. He’d tried to strike the traitors from it before she came home, but ghosts were harder to kill. They lingered. He didn’t want her to see this Winterfell yet, a ghost come to eat up their childhood, a ghost of their family and their home. “Don’t look,” Jon said, and Arya nodded again and clung closer, her nose dug into his chest, as trusting of him now as she’d been as a babe.

He’d carried her in his arms then, too. Had felt the same wild emotions, almost skirting anguish, at how light she was against him, how deeply he felt the need to protect her, to keep her safe. 

The maid was just pouring in the last bucket of water, steam already filling the room and chasing out the worst of the cold, as he carried Arya inside. The girl gave a big-eyed look to him, curtsied, and shut the door behind her smartly as she left.

That, more than anything, was the balm he wanted. To be alone with Arya, cloistered in somewhere warm. There was a stool by the bath, and he eased Arya to her feet, took her elbow as she swayed. 

This was worse than a spill from her horse, or a harsh word from her lady mother. T’was worse than her fear over Bran’s fall, even. It felt impossible to know where to patch her first, which hurts needed his attention _now_ and which could wait.

“Are you hungry?” he tried. “Thirsty?”

She sat down, all the while peering up at him. He’d always been taller than her, but Jon felt almost like a stranger now, looming over her. He knelt down that they might be eye to eye, and was rewarded with the promise of a smile, just the smallest motion of her mouth, a ghost of that once familiar look she’d always worn just for him.

He wanted that smile for true. But Arya couldn’t be rushed to anything, and he didn’t dare try when she seemed so fragile to him, so breakable in the way she stared and stared.

If she was hungry for him most of all, as starved as he was for her, he’d feed her. 

Her hands lay in her lap. He reached for them, needing to touch her, needing the reassurance, and pressed them between his own. Now that she was here, now they were alone, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. But they hadn’t needed words before; he tried to be gentle as he peeled off her gloves—so thin as to be useless—and rubbed her fingers, sore-looking and pinking with warmth after the cold.

She kept staring at him, a stunned dazed look as he chafed warmth back into her hands. “Arya,” he said, just to say it, to let it lie tender in his mouth and know that she heard. T’was enough to spur her; finally she tugged away and trembling, laid her palm to his cheek. 

If the look she wore had alarmed him before, this look of building horror was worse. He tried to assure her, with his hands and his eyes. There was nothing she could tell him, nothing she could say, that—

In a small croak, she confessed as if it were wrenched from her, “They told me you were dead,” and her eyes filled with tears again.

For a second, he didn’t understand. T’was just words from her, just noise and told to him nearly calmly. And then it struck him, it pierced him. She hadn’t. She hadn’t believed it, and he was begging to himself.

There was a world of horror and old pain yet in her face. Oh, gods. His mouth went painfully dry; his mouth worked uselessly. Oh, and their gods were _cruel_. 

“The Black Bastard on the Wall, killed by his own men,” she murmured, the words so careworn in her mouth, as if she’d said it to herself a thousand times before.

Arya had used to mumble little songs to herself, remembered phrases and rhymes she learned from the kitchen women's children. Had she said that to herself the same way? Hurt herself with it every time?

Jon had thought— had feared Arya was lost to him. But never once had someone come out and said it, never once had he been without even the smallest scrap of hope. Not when the Bolton bastard had written. Not when Commander Mormont had passed the raven scroll across the table. No, not even then.

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m not,” and felt her hand start to shake wildly. He put his hand to her fingers, pressed it into his skin. It wasn’t enough, not for such news. For such a half-true rumor. Not for such a lie.

She wasn’t crying again, just staring with big teary eyes. Jon said wildly, “Here, feel,” and coaxed her into wrapping her cold little hand half about his neck.

His heart was beating so madly, so forcefully, that surely she could feel it. “I didn’t think,” Arya said a little wildly herself. “I didn’t— I should have—” and her face screwed up in tears.

A blow and he bent with the speed of it. _I didn’t think you lived_.

Jon hadn’t learned how to simply sit there and ignore her crying when he was a boy—was always fetching her from her cradle or drawing her away to sit in his lap—and whatever trick her mother and their father had learned to turn away from her, it didn’t come over him now. He reached for her, dragged her close, the legs of the stool shrieking on the floor as she threw her arms about his neck and clung to him so tightly it made him hiss in pain.

He wanted it to hurt. Gods but he was glad of it. It wasn’t real if it didn’t hurt.

If she was but half as fragile, if the bones of her face were only half so sharp, he might have held her back with equal force. As it was, her little bird-bone body in his arms, he only held her tight enough that she could feel it.

He put his arms about her like an iron band, like laying a bar across the door that led to a world that t’was anything but this. _Go away_ , Jon said with that touch, to anything that wasn’t them.

Arya cried now like she resented it, choked down sobs lingering painful in her chest. It pained him, it broke him, how she kept mumbling, “Shouldn’t have— Shouldn’t—”

“Don’t,” he begged. “Gods, Arya don’t—” and he hardly knew what he was asking, for her to stop crying or for her to cry for true, instead of those painful barks of half-birthed grief.

She sobbed out, “You were gone! They said you were gone!”

Every second, and she broke his heart anew. To think it, to even think it— 

The days on the Wall after the raven came, that Father had died, and not even a word of her— Had Jon not thought it himself for lack of belief, or because the grief of it would have knocked him over where he stood?

She’d heard it, and believed it, and still thrown her body up on a horse to come home.

He was helpless in the face of her grief. “I’m here,” he swore, fisting his hand in against her back, clutching her as close as he could without simply melting the two of them together. He wanted to press so hard they fused, steel to steel like in Mikken’s forge, like he’d watched her skinny little Needle be made from endlessly folded sheets. “I’m _here_ ,” he said, nearly begging.

_Believe me, believe me_ , he pleaded. _You’re so deep inside me that nothing could pry us apart._

She shuddered, shoved closer, crawled almost back into his lap. Arya was trying to stop cry now; more resentful little noises. She gulped down air and told him, a miserable moan, “They killed me too. When they hurt you, they killed me too.”

It had. It had killed them both, and Jon had risen and all the while Arya had been alone, still carrying it with her. She’d died with him, the same traitorous blows.

Had he not always felt the same? She took even the smallest wound, and he flinched from it. She trembled with cold and he felt it to his bones. “I know,” he said, meaningless, and coaxed her hand to his throat again. His eyes filled, dripped.

Let the pain strike them both, but give them this, too. A bandage across the wound, a touch to heal them both. “I know,” he said. “I know, I know. Shhh. But it doesn’t hurt anymore. Shhh. Let it stop hurting you, too.”

Fresh wails, the childish cries she’d given as a girl, knowing the noise would bring someone running to comfort her. Let them drain that ugly wound she carried, festering in her chest instead of the knife-marks that were hers by right. She gasped out little cries for him, and he was there now and comforted her. Gave himself over to comforting her.

He didn’t know how long they sat there, knotted together. He rocked her, hushed her, and heard the night bell clang so distantly it might’ve been sound drifting down from the moon. He was weeping too, silent cries, pressed his face to the top of her head. Her hair was wet with snow; she pressed against him so tightly there wasn’t a way for her not to feel his own shuddering breaths. 

Slow, their mourning slowed. The hot miserable knot in his chest, a misery he’d carried with him riding from Winterfell that first time, carried in every long day since, eased as Arya mumbled, rubbed her cheek against him, gasped out, at last, the tell-tale hitching breath, how he’d always known before that her tears were done.

Exhausted, the both of them. He’d been so tired before, and the shock of having her again, the sudden madness of it, slipped from him. Holding her life this was so familiar. Absurdly, he hid a yawn, pressed to the side of her head. Arya was no heavy weight to bear, t’was easy to shift her better in his arms, to hear her murmured pleasure at being kept so close, and the sudden force his old obligations—returned to him at long last—struck him hard as a blow in the practice yard.

He didn’t need to be told how to take care of Arya. To sit here for an age, until the Winter thawed and Spring rose up, or until the world fell all to ice and died that way, would satisfy him. To hold her for another hour would satisfy him. She was breathing smooth and regular against his chest now, cried out.

But holding her wouldn’t make her any cleaner, or see her fed, or bring her closer to sleeping in a real bed, as the way that she moved so listlessly told him she needed be. He crooned to her, pet her, and tried to loose her arms from about his neck.

Stubborn, his girl, and endlessly sweet. She didn’t want to let him go; he had to ease her away and set her back upon the stool. “Don’t leave me—” she burst as he knew she would, snotty and panicked, and he caught her grasping hand in his own. 

“How often have you eaten?” he asked, folding his fingers over hers. “When did you eat last?”

Her look was all mystification. “You don’t even know?” he begged and finally she shook her head. “Stay here, I’m not going far. 

He fetched her the broth, a thick wooden cup of it, and warm to the touch. Lady Flint was a worthy chatelaine; he hoped Arya liked her, that she might keep the job. 

Arya took the cup from him, looked at it as if she’d never seen broth before, as if he hadn’t spent a whole afternoon spooning it into her mouth when she’d caught fever the year she turned six. She’d been so stubborn then, wailing for him incessantly, and he’d climbed in bed beside her to stop her howling. 

Never mind the sickness had passed between them like Maester Luwin had chided that it would. They were so close, and so often was she eating from his plate, that he would have caught it anyway.

“Drink it,” he told her, “please.” When she still paused, he wiped her cheeks with his sleeve. Her whole face was wet; he wiped at his own next and felt the same wetness. 

She looked at him warily and he settled back on his heels, waiting there. Arya had always wanted him with her when she was ill or very tired or upset. It made his heart thrill, how she reached out a hand now and laid it upon his jaw, a touch more chaining than a collar. “Don’t _go_ ,” she scolded, half-beg and half-order.

“Drink your broth,” he said back and she huffed, scrunching up her red nose.

She drank a little of the broth, an uneasy sip. But t’was hot, and she was hungry; she looked hungry all across her face. Arya closed her eyes and drank more quickly enough. 

And then she sighed and lowered the cup, and Jon knew it, knew it down to her bones, that she’d been so hungry once that simply eating had made her ill. He didn’t fuss as she turned her attention to him, just let her.

T’was no trouble, to feed her in little bits. T’was no trouble to keep her pleased as she did what he asked. He knew how to look after her. He’d heard her lady mother once complain that Arya was difficult, and it made Jon’s dislike for her grow. Nothing about Arya had been a challenge to him.

Arya was still touching him, looking with those wide greedy eyes.

“I didn’t know you were king now,” she said and her fingers wandered from his jaw to the top of his head, the plain brass circlet he wore shoved back into his hair. She touched it, then took her hand away. She returned her fingers to his jaw and there was a look in her eyes that he didn’t like, a new look. Some unhappiness that bloomed there.

Jon couldn’t pretend to ignorance. He felt it, too. The weight of his secret heart, the knowing Arya shared in her face. In some part of himself, Jon had always wanted this. The name. Winterfell. To get it now, in such a way, should have soured even the stupidest greenest dreams he’d had as a boy.

Could she see that it didn’t? That it pleased him to lay their home before her again like a nameday gift? That some part of it still felt good? If she did, Jon thought, let her see too the guilt he had for wanting it, heavy and black as tar.

“I’m not king,” Jon assured her, so glad that this at least was true, and he reached up. The crown always sat crooked on his head, slipping down as he rode, making lords stop to bow and speak to him when all he wanted was to cross the yard in peace. He cast the damn thing aside, listening to it roll across the rush mats and clang, discarded, against one leg of his bed. “Robb’s will legitimized me and named me his heir,” he told her, “but I don’t want it. That’s Bran’s right.”

Her eyes were wide, a little wondering. “Legitimized? Jon Stark,” she said as if to test the feel of it in her mouth. And then, even more slowly, “That man, the guard— he said that Bran was still alive. Is he here too?”

“No,” Jon sighed out. “He’s gone beyond the Wall for something important. But he’ll come home soon enough. Did he say—” 

He could give her Winterfell, and it made him feel a king. Giving her this—he might have been more than that. He cupped her face, stroked his thumb across her cheek. “Arya,” he said, eager and so tender it hurt, “you should know, t’was just Robb who’s lost to us. Sansa is safe in the Vale, and Rickon’s in Skagos. I cannot say exactly where,” he admitted, “but safe, wherever he is.”

If hearing his new name made wonder cross her face, this threatened joy enough to swallow them both alive. She said, almost disbelieving, “Alive? All of them?”

She reached for him, took his free hand. Her grip was painfully tight. 

If she cried again, might be tears of delight. Might be he’d get his smile after all. “Jojen and Meera Reed saved Bran and Rickon’s lives. They’re guarding him now. And do you remember Lord Baelish?”

A shadow crossed her face, but not even the greasy little man could dim her brightness long. She nodded. “He took Sansa from the Lannisters,” Jon went on. “She says he’s determined to keep her safe.”

Arya shut her eyes before the tears beading on her lashes could fall. “I cannot believe it,” she told him. “Truly. Gods, Jon, truly?”

“I said the same,” he assured her. Pleasure transformed her face; his smile was coming along well. He’d save telling her _how_ he learned it for later. He’d let her feed Mormont’s raven a handful of corn and see her startle and crow out wild laughter as Bran spoke from within it. 

But for now, he said, “You’ll grow used to it. And until you do, let me believe it enough for the both of us.”

She opened her eyes at that and gave him a look warmer than any fire. “Aye,” she said a little shyly. “Will you tell me if I ask? Again, I mean.”

“Always,” and he dared to press in close and kiss her cheek.

She put a hand to the spot where his mouth had fallen. Then, thoughtfully, the same somber kind of thoughtfulness with which she’d approached maths and lessons from their father, she asked, “And Rickon still has Shaggydog with him?”

He hadn’t been sure. If Arya was so far that Bran couldn’t find her then Nymeria was certainly nowhere near. His heart leapt into his throat. “Aye,” Jon said. “Aye, they’re together. Are you, did you ever get these—”

“I’ve been having—” she said at the same time, and they said, together, “—wolf dreams.”

The look on her face was like the sun rising to warm his face. As sweet and good as anything he’d ever known. “I missed that,” Jon confessed. She’d always known his mind so well, and he’d known hers. At the Wall sometimes, when he spoke he’d kept expecting that little piping echo.

In Winterfell, it laid across him like a brand, scorching those tender bits of him charcoal black. Every reminder was a killing blow, that he was home and she was still gone and his voice was just a single grim sound, whether he asked or ordered or stated or japed.

Arya bit her lip, then whispered so achingly tender, “Me too.”

If he did nothing but look at her for the rest of his life, he might die happy. This girl, this sweet impossible girl. He wanted all of her to stay like this, so close they could share breath. He wanted everything about her, always.

Gods, even the pain. He wasn’t surprised when she ducked her eyes and said tremblingly, “I dreamed about Bran’s wolf, too. And once, Ghost. But I didn’t believe them. I couldn’t. Nothing seemed real anymore and I was so afraid—”

_To be right. To be wrong_. “The cold wasn’t the most dangerous,” she said mournfully. “But I thought they were all dead. Them, and you too. I thought— I thought I was the _last_.”

And what was a wolf, without a pack? Useless, struck lame and surrendered to slow starvation. His throat was tight with threatening tears. Arya had always hated to be alone; she’d collected boon companions like other girls had collected dolls. And from her friends she took the same comfort as other girls took from their toys; Arya had always been different from the rest. Better. She’d reached for a warm hand over a soft cloth one every time. 

She couldn’t ache without him feeling it; for her to think herself alone was another blow to them both. “No,” and he tucked her in close, bent his body around her. He could feel the shape of her body under her furs; spread his hand wide across the small of her back. 

“No,” he told her. “You’re not alone. Arya, I’d never leave you alone.”

“Almost, you did,” she murmured, choked and wretched, and Jon knew it would be a wound a long time healing. But he’d be there, to tend to it now. He thumbed a tear off her cheek and pressed his brow to hers. The girl, this impossible girl, and she was more brilliant than the sun to him.

“I know,” he murmured back. “I know, I’m sorry.” 

It didn’t seem enough, so paltry were the words. He’d keep her in his bed, to heal her from this. For years, for the rest of his life. Any time she woke from nightmares of it, she could reach for him and feel his warmth, and he could tuck her close until she slept again.

Small, like a secret, she told him, “I wasn’t going to come and see.”

He made a noise, coaxing. Her eyes were on his, too close to see each other properly, not nearly close enough. Arya said in a halting, clumsy way, “Here. Winterfell. I thought the Boltons held it still. But I saw the banners from the road and I just thought—not even the Boltons would dare. The direwolf is _ours_.”

His impossible girl. Such a small thing, and he might have lost her. Such a small thing, if the night lanterns had guttered for lack of oil—oil that Jon hadn’t wanted to grudge them. If the snow had come down harder, or the wind stung her eyes until she daren’t look up.

The world was so full of harm. He felt anguished with it, a seed tucked down and twinned next to his brimming happiness. 

Anguish, and sorrow, and confusion. “I’m glad you saw them,” he said back. “But Arya, where were you going, if not here?”

She pulled away, ducked her head down. Unease crept up his spine with cold fingers. There was nothing north of Winterfell. She didn’t know the Karstarks well enough to go there, or the Umbers. He doubted she remembered the feast their father had held for her fourth nameday, where she’d demanded with all the haughtiness of a young child that if the Greatjon hadn’t brought her a gift, he need swear his sword to her instead. One too many stories of some Targaryen princess, and the man had been endlessly charmed by it. The Greatjon had done it, afterwards had thrown her in the air until she was screaming with glee. 

She had laughed just as loud despite being earth-bound again, when the Greatjon had given in to her demands that the rest of them be given a turn, Robb and Sansa and Jon, even, though Lady Catelyn hadn’t looked impressed. But that girl, resplendent in her dirty frock and all wild giggling smiles, was so far away now. She lived in his memories alone. safe and protected and untouchable.

He didn’t love that girl any less; he didn’t love the girl before him any more. He tried to catch her eye and she refused him, chewing at her lip again.

No, for this Arya now, uneasy from betrayal and battered by the world, there would be nothing north of here. “Arya,” he pressed, choking down his concern, “if you weren’t coming here, where were you going?”

After a long fragile moment, she whispered, “The Wall.”

He stopped. Swallowed down the words he wanted, swallowed back down, _But you thought I was dead_. Her hands were tight on his, her eyes still turned away. He loved her so much that it wounded him just to think on it. He loved her so much that it had killed him. And she had never loved him any less; her first word had been his name and she said it now like she did then, like it was the world in a single sound.

“Jon,” an exhausted aching confession and he had to close his eyes a long moment before he could push the rest away.

She was tired; she was worn thin as an old sheet. He cupped her face again and stroked her cheek with his thumb, and she turned into it, slow and unsure. They didn’t have to think about it, not now. They could put aside; mayhaps someday they’d stand in hot summer sun and think back to it and laugh, the way a man grown would laugh at the night terrors of his childhood.

“You’re here now,” he said to her. “You’re here. The rest of it doesn’t matter.”

Her eyes were grievous, wounded. They fluttered shut as he leaned in close, and she sighed a little as he brushed kisses across the pale purple skin of her eyelids. When he pulled away, it was only to say, gently, “Drink your broth before it goes cold.”

She drank, and then held the cup between her hands as she used to do when she was a girl. “I should have known,” she said at last, and so tiredly. “I should have thought it—that the others lived too.”

_I should have been stronger_ , she said just for him with her eyes, and the downward curl of her mouth. 

Whatever guilt she held for herself, Jon had none. There was only a deep abiding joy, a slow spread of wonder. Arya had been so small when she was lost, when she’d gone from a lord’s daughter—precious and safe and loved—to an orphan in a world with nothing but death and war. She’d scraped and clawed and fought and run and hid and lied, and here she was for it all. Here she was alive for it.

Her shame felt so foolish to him, but she held it so close, was so wounded by it, that he didn’t dare tell her so.

Jon didn’t care if despair had driven her those last, most precious steps. She’d taken them, was what mattered. And when she’d fallen at the end he’d been there to catch her, as if the gods themselves had arranged it, an apology for the rest. Like how they’d all gone as a wild pack—and despite the scoldings—harassed honey from those rare and wild beehives in the Wolfswood. She’d despaired, she’d come home back to his arm. T’was sweetness after the sting.

What more strength could you ask than that? He said it back to her, careful in how he took her cup and set it aside, how he kept his eyes on her face and refused to look away, or let her turn her own eyes from him again.

She’d been so strong, and he was proud of her for it, a fierce pride that bubbled up out of him like water from a fountain spout. She’d been so strong, and he saw it in her face, how it was fading in her now like frost trapped in her furs had melted away as he’d carried her inside. Her hands were trembling as he took them in his own, turned them over, and kissed her filthy palms. 

It went out of her like a candle snuffed at his fingertips. The last of the despair, and it couldn’t stand in the face of him. She was home now, and the drastic clawed grip of herself, the determination and stubborn she’d snatched from her child’s heart and honed to a sword, it all relaxed in a single shuddering sigh.

She’d used the last of her strength to come home. But that was alright, Jon thought. He had strength enough for the both of them. He shifted back, feeling the tired grind of his knees, and laid hands on her ankle long enough to coax her foot to rest on his thigh.

The buckles of her boots were bent and misshapen, the boots themselves absurdly large. She’d been running; she’d had no coin. No doubt they were taken from someone, some corpse, Jon thought. He could remember a time when Arya was shod in kid slippers, when she raced barefoot across the soft ground of the godswood, when she’d never had to plunder a battlefield to keep herself dressed and warm.

She was staring at him, chewing at her lip, but ducked her head when he looked back. Crimson across her cheeks, and her mouth was trembling. It made him so tired to see it, that little curl of doubt that he’d understand. Jon pulled the first boot off, took her foot in his hand, and said, “Don’t. Don’t— what use could a dead man get from them?”

She’d stuffed straw in the toes to keep the boots from sliding. It stuck in shivery little wisps to her stockings. She used to come home covered in straw and bits of hay after playing in the stables. Her foot was so small in his hands; she made a little pained noise as he touched the arch of it. 

T’was too easy, Jon knew, to lose your toes to frostbite. To lose your foot, your entire leg. All the cold was hungry and a man was an easy thing to eat. Had she seen whatever killed the man, before she’d taken his boots? The war had been trying to eat her too. He leant forward, pressed his brow to her knee, and shuddered. 

They were both so close to crying again. There was an ocean of tears between them. To have her wince away from him, for anything, was not something he could allow. “Don’t be _ashamed_ ,” Jon demanded. “Not ever. Don’t ever be ashamed if it brought you back to me.”

It felt like benediction, like forgiveness, like a blessing, how she touched her hand to his hair and asked hoarsely, “Have you ever— Did you have to—”

“Aye,” Jon assured her. He’d climbed out of the mouth of the world too, to come back here. “Aye, and worse. We didn’t like it, Arya. That’s the difference. We didn’t like it, but we had to stay alive.”

He worked off her other boot, and cast it aside with the first. Filthy like the rest of her, but she’d had a good eye. They were salvagable if cleaned. All the rest of her clothes were for the fire or else the midden heap. He’d find new things for her to wear, things that fit her, as much softness and warmth he could give her in the middle of a winter promising to stretch far too long. 

Arya was struggling with the ties of her heavy furs now, fingers scraping uselessly at the knot and her eyes went once, twice past his face and fastened greedy on the steaming tub. Jon could too well remember being filthy; he tugged her hands away, saying gently, “Let me. Shh, let me.”

_He_ wasn’t half-frozen or mostly-starved. Even his tiredness was sliding away. He undid the rough knots carefully, and when he looked up and saw her looking at him again, with the same wet-eyed wanting she’d given the bath, he said, “Do you remember when you were small, I used to take you swimming? That stream in the Wolfswood, by the oak so tall that we used to jape how it had been there longer than Winterfell.”

“T’was a river,” Arya said. When he started to ease the furs off her shoulders, she sat docile and let him. He _knew_ how to take care of Arya; she trusted him to do it still. 

“T’was a stream,” Jon assured her. “And only a river in your memory, for you were so small.”

She bit her lip, then nodded. There was dirt smudged just there across her cheek. He let go the hooks of her jerkin to lick his thumb and brush it away.

Some was dirt. Most of it was bruise. It was too easy to imagine the fat hand that had made it, or the swift clout from a staff, a broom. She was still blinking up at him, turning her cheek to his fingers, to his caress, like a plant towards the sun.

He hushed himself instead of raging. Rage would only frighten her, and to see her flinch from him for a loud noise or a harsh word meant to ruin the stillness he was making between them now. “I had to do your buttons,” Jon whispered instead. 

“You always did them wrong,” Arya whispered back. “That’s how Mother caught us, remember? She was so wroth, and you said—”

“—aren’t Tully-fish supposed to swim?” They said it together. The memory caught at him, Lady Catelyn’s outraged face, Jon’s own grim determination—she’d taught Arya to swim, how to keep her head above the water and paddle about like a hound, but Arya had been too impatient, too frightened, too wild to take more instruction than that.

T’was Jon who’d taught Arya grace in the water, splashing palmfuls over her brows and cheeks till her crying at the wet touch changed to giggles, Jon telling her so patiently that he wouldn’t dunk her till she was ready, that she was safe so long as she kicked her feet a little and clung tight about his neck.

“I thought she’d strike me,” Jon confessed. He touched his thumb to the bruise again, and asked, petal-soft and sweet, “Who’s been striking you, little sister?”

She breathed out, shivery little sound, and damp. Jon caught the tear that rolled down her cheek, rubbing her thigh with his other hand, waiting. Sometimes Arya had to be coaxed, but mostly she needed this—someone to wait, to listen patiently, as she fumbled the problem apart herself.

Her eyes were mournful. At last, she said, “A Frey. He tried to pull me off my horse and I— With Needle—”

She looked at him, then away, frightened little glances. Jon swallowed down his fear—she was with him now, and safe; Daenerys might well raze the Twins when she came through them, or Winter might consume the castle alive—and said, “You came through the Twins, then.”

Anyone might have said t’was childish, babyish, the way she twisted her hand in his shirt and clutched it tight. The new touch, the new hold was already familiar to him and he stroked across her knuckles gently. But Arya hadn’t clung even half so much as a child, not even with Jon. “I had to,” she said miserably. “There was no other way. And I looked, I did! But to take a boat past the Sisters took so long, and I wanted to be _home_.”

Another tear slipped from the corner of her eye. Jon kissed it away, touched his temple to hers, assured her softly, “T’was dangerous, that’s all I meant. The Freys have no love for the Starks. They, did you hear? Robb, and your lady mother—”

“I heard,” Arya said back. Her mouth twisted further, like she was holding in a wail. And then she was using the hand in his shirt to push him away. Not far, only a little, and Jon felt the distance pierce his heart as sharp as a pin even as she said, almost desperately, “I want to wash. Please, I want—”

He’d give her anything she wanted, anything. If she needed distance, he’d give her that/ if she needed time, he would make some just for her. He sat back on his heels, made quick work of her jerkin’s hooks, and helped her fight it off her shoulders.

She had to stand to peel off the thick fur leggings she wore over her breeches. Jon kept a hand at her waist, balancing her as she swayed, helping shove them down. When she was done, standing there only in her breeches and stockings and blouse, he first gave thought that she might not want to keep him with her while she bathed.

If the anguished need to watch over her was as familiar and worn as his own hands, this thrill of concern was new. Arya had been a skinny little stick, last he saw her. She wasn’t so old as to be a woman now but undressed from her thick winterwear, she could no more pretend to be a child than Jon himself.

The jut of her hips was skin over hard bone where he palmed her side there, and her shirt clung close with thin sweat from the fire. Starving had stolen all the fat on her, but she’d kept the muscle hiding under the linen, sleek and sinewy as a cat’s. Her only softness was a growing woman’s softness; she didn’t wear a breastband and her shirt clung there just the same as her stomach, her back, all of it transparent from the damp. She had grown, his little sister, and as she stood there and shivered and picked at the rough skin of her knuckles, Jon drew away a little.

The maid hadn’t hung a sheet. It should be nothing, to help Arya from the rest of her clothes and dunk her in the bathwater. They’d swam together as children, bathed together even when they were very young, them two and their siblings plunked into the same stone bathing pools hidden in Winterfell’s depths, squalling and squawking and splashing each other as the maids waded in with their skirts tied up and brushes in their hands.

Jon didn’t think it was possible to feel shy around Arya. Mayhaps, he thought, he felt shy because she didn’t feel shy herself. She made no move to cover herself and only hesitated at his own hesitation.

He’d sent the maids away and the thought of strangers near them made him bristle. “Jeyne Poole,” Jon said slowly, watching Arya’s fingers still, “is here. Somewhere. The rest of the household, Father’s people, they’re—”

He swallowed. Arya had made friends among them all as a child and he half expected fresh tears, but her face was confused a little, a little sad. Not devastated. Expected sadness, Jon thought. She’d known. She knew what happened to smallfolk during a lord’s war.

“Anyways,” he said, and cleared his throat. Her hip was hot. He pushed up the hem to touch it for true, to feel the heat of her without anything in the way. She was softer than her hands here, silk over bone. The calluses of his own hand caught as he pet the sharp arch warily as he might a cat. “I can have her brought,” he offered. “She could attend to you.”

He didn’t dare look up. The awkwardness of it, the foreignness that t’was awkward at all, dug claws into his chest. But he would if she said yes. He wanted to give her what she wanted.

“You said,” Arya said very slowly, and he could hear how she struggled not to sound upset, “that you weren’t busy. That you could, you would look after me.”

She might have threatened tears, that skinny stick of a girl Jon had done his best to spoil so absolutely. But now she only sounded injured by it, exhausted. He rested his face to her side, wrapped his arm about her belly. He couldn’t bear to be away from her; he was so glad he’d made it plain. Jon said finally, “I only thought. You might wish for a woman to attend you, that’s all.”

_Now_ she sounded sulky, familiar, her hand a greedy grab at his hair. “What would I do with a woman?” Arya asked, so bewildered that Jon couldn’t help but feel charmed. “Why would I want Jeyne Poole? _You’re_ here.”

He loved her so much it burned in him, his little sister, his sweet sister, and how stupid she thought Jon, that he’d ever considered she’d pick Jeyne over him for anything. She tugged at his hair again, a sharp sting across his scalp, then soothed it clumsily, like she was petting a dog.

“Aye,” he said. “Aye, I’m here.” And every moment of it seemed as if a dream, ice threatening to melt in his palm, punishment for daring to reach out and touch it. Dreamwine had given him nights such as this and to wake in the morning was to wake weeping. Jon thought he could no more leave Arya behind in this room than he could leave his sword arm behind.

She shifted and said, prodding, “I want to wash. Everything itches, now I’m warm.”

And then, cautiously, like trying on old clothes, familiarly worn but so long ago cast aside, a childhood cloak made too big, yet one you weren’t sure still fit you, she ordered haltingly, “Take my socks off. It aches too much to bend.” 

It was a stumbling awkwardness. He only turned his head and blindly kissed her belly, trying to say in their old familiar language, _That’s how you are with me. That’s right, just like that._

He wanted back her greediness for his attention, for his laughter. Arya must have wanted it back, too. She gave his hair another tug and said, whining this time and more sure of herself, “Come _on_ , Jon.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it, a hoarse rasp in his throat as he eased her fingers from his hair, eased back from her. She was looking down at him, more nervous than her words made her seem, and her lip swollen and raw looking; she said, “Don’t leave me. I don’t want you to leave me again.”

Jon couldn’t regret his choice to go to the Wall. He’d thought it best, he _had_ , and he’d been needed there in the end. But to have walked away from them, from Winterfell, from Robb, from Arya, had been a mistake.

He told her with his eyes, with his hands. Arya’s knuckles were split, scarred and rough and cold-reddened, picked to almost to the point of bleeding. A salve after she bathed, he thought and brushed a feather-light kiss across them. “I won’t,” he murmured, choked with it. “Not ever again. I won’t.”

No words had ever been more sacred. Jon had torn through the last oaths he’d made before a heart tree. He’d trod across them with panicked lack of care. But now with only Arya there to witness, with the weeping bleeding face of the weirwood present only in his mind, as he thought of that ancient tree at the center of Winterfell where Jon had first been taught to pray and of the girl who so often waited for him there, he swore, “I won’t leave you behind. I swear.”

Arya let out a little noise, almost pleasure, almost pain. “Good,” she said. Her eyes were very wet, glossy, the same as his. “Good,” she said, a little shudder, clutching at his hand. “Because I came all this way, and I’m so _tired_ , and I wanted you, I did, and it isn’t my fault it took so long, no one would take me to the Wall no matter how many times I tried, and you were so far away, and—”

“And—”

_And you left me_ , the trembling curl of her mouth said, the tearful wail she’d kept inside the whole time they’d said goodbye.

He waited, rubbing his thumb across her own calloused palm, for her to say it out loud. Jon’s back was hunched, braced for the blow. A whiplash would hardly hurt him more. But a man who’d abandoned his most important post need be punished. 

Even now, Arya didn’t want to hurt him. Her face was all tender mercy. She sighed out, with heavy longing, “And I want my bath now, please.”

There was no one else he loved more in the world. Jon would never love someone so much as this; Arya took up all the room in his heart and he was glad of it. “You need it,” he told her, just as cautious as her own teasing had been. 

When she gave him a watery smile, the smile he had wanted, at last, he went on, fording the gap between them step by step on ice that might be brittle or might be solid enough to hold. “What did you do, sniff them all and take the worst smelling boots? A fine way to make sure no one tries to steal them from _you_.” Taking her foot in his hand, feeling her brace against his shoulder, he yanked her stocking off with a grunt. “Did you take his socks, too?”

“Aye, well, you smell like horse!” Arya cried back, choked now with the edge of laughter instead of tears. 

Her ankle was bruised, a long snaking shadow that disappeared into her breeches. “And you’re the one with those big baths downstairs, my lord of Winterfell,” she huffed. “And _I’m_ the one that couldn’t wash for fear of freezing!”

She did reek, horse and girl and old blood, though most of it had crusted her furs. Her blouse was helplessly stained, big brown splotches and long grey lines of sweat across her back and chest and under her arms. She was untying the knot at her neck as she chided him, too impatient to wait.

New fear, old fear truly, struck him. Arya wrapped up in winter clothes looked a boy, if she was on horseback. But the beauty of her childhood, the wild glory of her eyes and hair and mouth, had blossomed with added years. 

Close enough to fight with sword, t’was clear she was a woman. And close enough to swordfight was close enough to grab. She didn’t limp as she walked, or flinch to have a man so close.

It overwhelmed his thoughts. He couldn’t cast that curling insidious fear away.

There was a trick to keeping your hands steady—long even breaths and the hard will, the need. He couldn’t risk making her afraid, and she would be even without knowing it if she saw his own fear. Jon untied the laces of her breeches, riding leathers near-stuck to her legs, and eased them down her hips.

Any shyness left him; she only clutched his shoulder, saying, “Be careful!” as he revealed a long ugly scrape down one leg, like skin dragged across rough stone.

Any bleeding it had done was long before; it hadn’t healed but nothing was wetly red. Jon hissed through his teeth, eased her breeches free of her ankles, and traced the edge of the bruise that turned, as it rose, to roughened red skin and scabs.

It quit long before it reached the dark tie of her smallclothes, but that didn’t ease him any. Close enough to fight was close enough to grab, and anyone still left at the Twins had no honor.

“The Freys?” he demanded, feeling rage gather hot in his throat. He was too tired to ease himself again, not even when she startled, eyes wide and uncertain on his face. He regretted it, but he could no more stop it than he could still the hand that flatted across her thigh, just above the wound.

Arya shifted, set her blouse to drop, and rested her fingertips on the edge of her smallclothes. She said in a very small voice, almost embarrassed, “Icy rocks. I slid down them.” 

And then, in a voice even more embarrassed, but padded with little flicking glances at his face, wanting something from him, she mumbled, “I sewed the breeches back together. Did you, you didn’t even notice.”

Arya had once wept as if her heart was breaking, curled into Jon’s side, that her stitches were shit and would never improve, and Jon had found new wrath inside himself for holy women. He raised his brows. She said, almost an unintelligible mutter, “You could look. If you like, I mean.”

He loved her so much it threatened to overtake him, like a wave breaking far above his head. Jon drew her breeches back to his hand, found the leg that matched her bruised side, and felt along the seam. The leather edges were sewed carefully back together in neat workman’s stitches.

She’d always gone to Jon first to crow out her triumph, but saying _well done_ , as he had when they were children seemed paltry now. He knew how to take care of her; he knew how to give her what she wanted. He touched her hip, caught the tie for her smallclothes under his thumb, and said, “I thought to keep you with me for the war council. But now, mayhaps I’ll put you in with the other women. You’ll be a great help to them; they complain endlessly that some lords or others tearing their shirts and messing their furs.”

“I don’t want to go sew with all the ladies!” she cried, all hot offense. In her eyes a new blaze was growing, a merry mischievous light.

“No?” Jon teased. “Not even now you’ve turned into as great a lady as the rest of them?”

She tried to kick him; he pulled the knot at her hip free, turning away and standing, swallowing down his grin at her outraged cry. No nerves for either of them, this way. He’d always been able to soothe her, to meet her wildness as no one else could; his own fear melted in the wake of her steady assurance.

“Come here then,” Jon said, not daring to look. He held his hand out and felt her rest her fingertips in his, a touch as soft as snow falling on the cheek as she stepped into the tub.

Steam licked around her legs. She said, “It’s hot!” in tones of pained delight. Arya had no shyness, no fear to keep her body from him. Another woman would have covered her teats with a nervous arm; she didn’t care that his eyes were on her, the ladder of her ribs pushing out under her skin, the fragile stretch of her collarbone, her small breasts gone flushed with heat as she sank down in the water.

Jon stole the stool for himself, his knees still protesting a day spent almost fully a-horse, followed by a stint on the floor. It gave her a chance to settle, to wince at her own bruises without needing to keep looking at him.

When he turned back, Arya was busy wetting herself, her shoulders and neck, and a single cautious dunk of her head. Her hair was short enough to hang down her brow without threatening her eyes, shorter than she’d ever worn it as a child.

“Does it help with the fleas?” he asked and palmed the side of her head.

She made a face at him. “No, and don’t go cutting yours off. Your ears’ll be awfully cold. Does _that_ help?” and she jutted her chin at the waiting soap, strong enough to perfume the air even dry.

Most of the soap in the keep was like that, hard tallow and bitterly herbal in one final effort to keep off the fleas. Jon had come from the baths more than once feeling like a fresh-scrubbed floor. And it burned to even touch a minor scrape, he remembered with a wince.

He hadn’t thought to set anything aside for this day, something softer, something that smelled less like the foamy buckets of wash poured over sheep before they were shorn. At least her injuries would be well-cleaned when he saw to them, he thought grimly. 

She splashed a little water at him. Arya did poorly being ignored, like she knew that she filled the world. “Some,” Jon said. “Or so the laundress tells me. Just don’t go checking anyone’s bed furs; I’d rather think that than know the truth.

“It cannot make it _worse_ ,” Arya told him, opening her eyes wider that he might see how hard she rolled them. _Spoiled_ , her smile said to him, her half-incredulous look. But Jon hadn’t forgotten how it felt to be filthy down to your skin, or the shocking pleasure of any soap at all. Arya reached for a yellow chunk eagerly—

And he caught her wrist very gently and held her hand away. He’d moved before he even thought it, instinct raising a hue and cry.

He had no excuse for it, no reason he could offer, that he opened his mouth and the words fell out so desperately, “Let me do it. Please.”

If he had no reason to ask, she had no reason at all to let him. Sitting in a warm room had bolstered her; Arya seemed in little danger of fainting now. It wouldn’t tax her to take up a cloth and soap.

But Jon wanted to do it. He wanted to wash her clean with his own hands. He wanted it to be him, as if to wash her would, like magic, undo the grim past from her body, from her mind.

The heat of the water made Arya flushed, her short curls clinging to her neck, her cheeks as red as wine. Jon couldn’t explain, didn’t know how to put that deep and clinging desire into words. All he could do was ask, helpless with his words and his thumb rubbing gentle across the sharp bone of her wrist.

Arya used to match him in nearly everything. Mayhaps she still did, even in this. Even as they couldn’t speak it, even as Jon half couldn’t understand it. She said, almost shyly, “Aye. If, if you like.”

There were rags there, soft worn scraps cut from sheets too ragged to lay upon the beds. But he soaped his hands, instead, waiting patiently until she was finished shifting about and deigned, at last, to sink deep into the water. Arya’s sigh now was all deep pleasure and her own submission to it. 

It was worth the ache of his own body, to slide off the stool and kneel at the tubside, to reach into the water and take up her hand. Her fingernails were ragged black half-moons, her knuckles swollen from ill use. 

“You passed through the Twins,” Jon said as he scrubbed between her fingers, and worked soap across her wrists, first one then the other. Under the reassurance of his touch, she might be prompted into speaking; he might be gentle enough about it that she wouldn’t feel shamed again to tell him what she’d done.

Every green boy first come to the sword should speak about the proving blow. Maester Aemon had done it for Jon, a healing touch. If Arya had been born a boy, if she’d come to the Wall with him or if Jon had stayed at Winterfell to see her raised so fierce and wild, Jon would have still put her sword in her hand. He would have done this too.

T’was late for it, this speaking. But it was Jon’s right either way, and he wanted it too badly, wanted to give her the chance to name and look at and banish any lingering ghosts.

The skin of her elbows was rough. The cold had made prey of her body; dried skin was likely to crack and bleed and ache. He was as gentle as he could be, using force only enough to wash away the dirt. If the soap bothered her, she didn’t show it. Arya had her face turned away. She murmured, “Aye, and through the Neck. But closer I got, mostly I went at night.”

“The worst time to travel, in winter,” Jon breathed out. He didn’t want her to take it as a scold; he scrubbed the ticklish insides of her arms with a firm hand, holding careful silence. When he dared look up at her, she was chewing her lip, but no more upset than she had been a minute before.

Her hair was inky-wet. A long drip of greyish water slid down her neck. She put her fingers to it, then dragged them across her throat to scratch the skin there, leaving behind a thin dirty mark.

“I didn’t want to risk the kingsroad,” Arya admitted, worrying the skin there under her jaw, “but I didn’t dare trust the swamps without a crannogman to guide me.” 

Howland Reed himself had told Jon how they’d dug deep pits where their paths had gone even just a year before. He’d described the careful process of thinning the ice, that it might look solid enough until you trusted your full weight to it.

Jon felt ill, acid on his tongue like he might be sick. An image fell on him, looking at her dark wet hair, the way she kicked her foot a little in the water. He mumbled something, some wordless encouragement, as he tried to drive it away.

Those who fell to the swamp in winter weren’t found until long in the spring, if at all. Arya, with her shoulder-blades like tight wings on her back as Jon bent her forward to scrub them, a hand tender on her arm to steady her, weighed so little.

She’d come home weak and tired. With heavy furs like to take on water, she would have gone under the black mud without even a chance to scream. How long there, under the mud, would it take until her skin was sloughed away and she was left only bone?

“The worst was after Moat Cailin, with nothing to keep the cold away at night,” she said now and gave a shrug. Her body moved under his touch; she shivered once involuntarily, like a horse after a landed fly. A man’s bones fell apart with rot. Scattered in such a way, would he know her?

Jon was frozen with his hand on her back; every breath was a struggle. He matched himself to her, the slow patient inhale, the slightly wheezy exhale. Arya did poorly being ignored. She craned her neck to see him and said, “The Neck had trees, at least. Jon?”

“Aye,” he told her numbly, from very far away, “I’m here.”

“But are you awake?” A hesitant question. She was shy again, his girl. It stung him worse than his own fears. He bowed his head and traced down the full length of her spine, a firm touch.

_You know me_ , he ached to say. _You know me. Don’t ever be shy with me._

Or else, clinging to his mouth like the oily film onion soup left behind, enough to keep from starving but no more than that, _Pardons. Every single thing you tell me gives me more reason to fear for you. Even though you’re here. Even though you’re safe now._

He’d have nightmares about it, to join the other dreams. The knobs of her spine were painful to look at, pressed to her skin, indecent. Jon shuddered out a breath and soaped high up her neck, to the short curls of her hair. “I won’t fall asleep,” he said at last. 

She turned back, tugging her knees up to her chest and folding her arms about them.

“If you don’t want to hear—” she said, hurtful and sulky.

How many things had he wanted to say to her, to share with her? He’d stored them packed tight in his chest all the while. Had she, too? The truth was painful, but pushing her aside would hurt her worse. She’d wanted him, she’d said it. T’was no less true to say that Jon had wanted her.

And Arya had always understood his pain. He cleared his throat and murmured, hushed, “If you’d fallen in the Neck, I might have never known.”

Silence, for a long moment. He breathed shallowly, tracing soap across the thin bridge of her shoulders. And then she said back, “When you— At the Wall. I was passing a sailor by, when he said it. If he hadn’t, if I hadn’t—”

She uncurled herself, fumbling to turn, reaching her hand out, reaching for him. Jon twined their fingers together, came around the tubside so she could see him without straining her neck. Clean, the skin of her knuckles looked worse.

“You need better gloves,” he said stupidly, meaning, _I don’t want either of us to be afraid anymore. Whatever happens, we’ll know. At least we’ll know._

“You’re strange now,” Arya said. “Stupider, too.”

She was smiling at him now, ducking her head even as she did it. She rubbed her other hand across her mouth like she wanted to wipe the smile away.

Outrage filled him. Arya used to laugh so loudly that Winterfell’s halls would ring with it. Even as a babe, all the women wanted to come around and coo at her, all the other grimy children of the keep had tumbled and tried handstands and made endless disgusting faces, just to hear the sound.

Jon had been the best at it, of course. He’d stolen her laughs like a crow stole shiny things, winging higher with each victory. All the while she’d been gone, he would have killed to hear the sound again. But somewhere she’d been laughing, and whoever had her then, too stupid to know the treasure in their hands, had taken from her even the safety of her joy.

The words stayed on his mouth, bitter-thin. _Tell me who taught you to hide your smile. I’ll beat them to death_. She was too shy to look at him and see the thought. It passed even as she turned her face to him again. 

“Telling me to wear better gloves when you don’t have any yourself,” Arya scolded, almost laughing, and reached out. She took his jaw between her hands, a warm possessive press, and Jon was hot with it, fire down his back. He could ignore the rest, for this single peaceful moment. He could set aside her unconcern over her own hurts, to know that she still lived unafraid to reach for him, the confident grab of a girl who knew she’d never be denied.

Their father had said to Jon once that he’d spoil Arya, indulging her endlessly as Jon had. He’d laughed at Jon’s confused protest, thinking Jon sought to avoid a scolding. Had ruffled Jon’s hair and sent him away again before Jon had time to explain. 

Jon’s thought had been this: how could you spoil someone already endlessly good? 

Arya said musingly, her nose a little scrunched, “I suppose you’ve gone mad about me wearing gloves now, even in the bath, because you take so little care of your own hands.”

“ _My_ hands—” Jon said, and absurd laughter bubbled in his throat. T’was hard to keep track of her words, when he was listening so close to her body, to the glad cry of it as she touched him, how his own body cried back.

“Aye,” Arya said. She looked at him from under her lashes, added near a whisper. “They’re rough.”

They both turned their heads down to look. Arya let go his face to touch her fingers to his, a stroke across the length of them. Jon turned them palm up that she might do it again, and she obliged. “You should take better care of yourself,” she chided, not japing at all now, only hushed and sweet. “Is there— Maester Luwin is gone, I know. But is there another maester? I want to ask for a salve for you.”

You couldn’t spoil someone so endlessly good. Arya turned his hands over and scrubbed her thumbs across his knuckles as if she might stroke away the cracked skin there. She murmured, “It wouldn’t hurt this scar, either, to be worked a little. Does it hurt to close this hand? You should take better care of yourself.” 

Before he could protest, could say t’was a brother’s job to look after his little sister, not the other way around, she broke his heart. She looked up then away, flushed from the heat and so very shyly that it pained him, and added, “Or you should let me. Take care of you, I mean,” and bent to brush her lips across the burn scar spread wide over his palm.

The sight of it, the way she pressed her cheek to his tired hand, just after, made him shut his eyes lest he wept. He’d wanted this, and so badly.

Only Arya would come in from the cold, half-fainting, starved lean as a sighthound, and think that _Jon_ needed looking after. “Lean back,” he coaxed, throat thick, feeling the tears gather there. 

To say yes to her would be to dissolve. Arya was more tired than he, and Jon needed his last strength to lend to her. _We can speak on it after_ , he told her with look, with careful touch as he eased her back against the tubside.

She frowned at him, unhappy protest that he hadn’t answered, but let him. He soaped her neck, feeling the scratch of his callouses on the thin skin, and then her collarbone. All the while she watched him, lids half lowered, some secret look. 

It used to be that Jon knew all her secret looks. 

It used to be Jon kept all her secrets. Now he washed her chest, the dips of her ribs, and her breasts carefully, with the lightest touch he could. As he touched her navel, dried blood lingering there absurdly like it’d soaked through her stained shirt, as he was making it fleck off with each touch, she said at last in an unhappy little voice, “Does someone take care of you already?” And then with rancor, “She does a poor job. Jon, I could do better.”

It struck him dizzy, how much he’d missed her. Arya had been his most ardent defender; if he’d been the one to wipe away more of her tears than she had his, t’was only because he was older. “No,” Jon rasped out, and rested his hand on her belly, feeling it rise and fall with each of her fast breaths.

He had a passel of squires he didn’t want, and aides for everything from war-advise to how best to distribute Winterfell’s fast-disappearing stores. Jon knew women a little better now, and he wasn’t ignorant of Wynafryd Manderly’s long looks, or even the way the chambermaid lingered as she poured out fresh wash water at the end of the night.

None of them, not even one of those many people, had ever cried unfair that Jon must sit with the squires on feast days, or stay home when all his other siblings might ride to White Harbor. 

None would ever throw themselves from a horse to reach him faster, or say his name as if their heart was breaking with joy. None would hold the news of his death so tightly they’d faint at the very sight of him. None would ever demand he take their socks off, or call him stupid when he spoke without thought. 

Jon couldn’t imagine a single one of them ever looking at him with eyes wet for sheer sorrow that he’d been alone.

“No one,” and he wanted it so much that it choked him. He wanted her care back so much that he could barely speak. It just seemed too much to ask, when all he’d ever prayed for was that she come back to him, even if she came back a stranger. Even if they lost the closeness they’d had, the closeness he craved. 

Arya looked so wary now, as if he’d ever turn her away. He croaked out, “Will you? Will you look after me?”

Tears clung to the thick fringe of her lashes. She was reaching for him, that beautiful mindless reach, knowing he would reach back. Jon wanted to spend the rest of his life reaching back. He folded her into his arms, the edge of the tub biting into his stomach and the bathwater soaking his shirt through, and he pressed his temple to her shoulder and shuddered out years’ worth of worry and fear in a single choking breath.

“I wanted you, when I was gone,” Arya said so softly in his ear, as if t’was a secret she’d carried in her heart for far too long. “I was so _lonely_ , Jon. I want, I wanted you.”

“I’m here,” he told her. Her wet hair was cool and stiff with mud. He pet her roughly, like she was a cat, feeling more than hearing the croon she made, wishing her hair was longer so he could muss it properly. “I’m here,” he said again, the relief of it like a chilled hand to a fevered cheek. “I’m here and we’ll take care of each other again, alright? Just like we did before.”

She made a messy little noise, almost a sob, almost a laugh. When he pulled away slowly, not wanting to leave her but not liking the water to get cold, she was flushed and wet-faced and nodding, a hand twisted in his shirt again. 

“You’re tired,” they said at the same time, and it made him choke a laugh out, made her giggle and tug away further, to wipe at her eyes.

“You’re tired,” Jon said, and his own exhaustion didn’t drag at his bones anymore, but he could see the future, in perhaps an hour’s time. Arya, warm and clean and dry, sleeping next to him in his bed where at any moment he might reach out a hand and rest it on her chest to feel the rise and fall of her breath and know she was well. “Let me finish this and feed you, alright? So we can rest.”

He wanted it more than anything. She yawned, a squeaky sound, and settled back into the water again. Her look was familiar pleasure, the delight she’d kept just for him. “Be careful with my leg,” Arya ordered, that charming way she used to boss him, and tilted her head back, giving out a deep peaceful sigh.

All of Arya felt fragile, like glassed windows in a hailstorm. T’was the worst with her feet and hands, Jon thought, because he knew how easy there were to break. Two of her toes were crooked in that tell-tale way and he winced to see it.

He worked soap over her feet then up over her legs. Arya was mostly leg now, tall enough to tuck just under his chin. He wanted to make a house for her from his arms, his chest. Selfishly, Jon hoped she didn’t grow anymore. 

She was still tense here, from long days riding. Jon felt the twin pangs, and from just a single day. He worked the wiry muscles until they unknotted, to keep her from cramping in the night, then scrubbed at her knees until they were rosy-clean. She was silent all the while, dozing or daydreaming, and Jon was loath to disturb her.

He wouldn’t have washed any higher, would have woken her enough to press the soap to her hands and turned away that they could feign privacy, only she gave another hitching little sigh and spread her thighs, just a little.

He pressed his fingers to her inner thigh, cupped it, but all Arya did was shift in place. Her head was still tilted back, her body pliant under him, and sweetly unafraid. Her fingers traced across the rim of the tub when he glanced at her face, the little sliver of red cheek and red mouth that he could see of it.

But she made no move to speak. He washed her thighs slowly, watching her collect soap suds between her fingers, watching her perform some obscure little game, building greying foamy peaks and towers.

She wasn’t shy or afraid. He felt it for her, a knot of worry deep in his stomach like a boot bruise to his ribs. It was good, that there were no bruises across her thighs, no scars. It made his hands steadier, the trusting way she lay back and let him, without flinch or shiver.

That she would trust him with it, with her most intimate place, her softest, gave him the courage to move his hand. Here, Jon thought, was the place a girl was the easiest to hurt. 

Some nights he’d been sick with fear at the thought of it, that someone might have forced her body under theirs. It had only gotten worse after discovering Jeyne Poole masquerading in her place. 

Ramsay Snow had a name, a face. He was a man, and Jon could kill a man for daring to hurt Arya in such a way. He couldn’t kill a specter, a shadow above her in his worst dreams, the ones where she screamed and thrashed and was left weeping bitterly. 

The world was full of danger; it was impossible for her to have forded it without taking any number of hurts. The proof was written on her, her cheek and ribs and wrist and ankle. But this— Jon couldn’t ask, couldn’t make himself, but he felt certain anyway, that violence of that type wasn’t something Arya had suffered.

He’d keep every pain from her if he could, especially this. His rough palm had caught on the thin wet skin of her neck, but touching her here was like silk touching silk; he could make himself gentle enough for her and the wonder of it filled him.

She made a noise, the smallest noise, a tender little croon. He wanted to swallow it down and keep it in his heart. Gentle, he need be gentle to tend her, and he washed Arya with more care than Jon had ever shown anything in his life.

She was hotter than the bathwater. Clean now. He took his hand away, brushed his fingers over her belly, not meaning to tickle her but feeling the strong clench of her muscles as he did, and the way she almost-laughed, huffing as she pulled away.

“Don’t,” she ordered, a lazy little whine, sleepy almost, and kicked her foot in the water. 

“You’re still ticklish, then?” he rasped, low. He rinsed the soap from his hand, and cupped the bend of her knee in his hand, then pressed his mouth to it. A silent apology.

Arya sighed again, and swept all of her odd little towers away. All of her was clean now but for her hair, cropped close to her head and clinging in short soggy curls. She tucked her cheek to her palm, looking at him with that same wanting look, almost disbelieving he was there with her.

Jon could spend the whole night just looking back, telling her with his eyes that he was, but the water was cooling. “Come closer,” he ordered. “Here, in the middle. I don’t want to splash water all across the floor.”

Arya gave him a mischievous little look and flicked droplets from her fingers to scatter across his chest. It didn’t matter much; his shirt was soaking through and cold where it plastered against him. Now a wry little grin for him, teasing; she knew it too. But she slid closer and tilted her head back, that he could take up the dipper and spill water over her head.

The water ran brown and grey; road dust, mud, ash. He carded his fingers over the curve of her skull, checking carefully for lumps or the heat of swelling, then reached for the soap again.

When she was small, washing Arya had been like scrubbing a wild cat, all high screams and sharp claws. Brushing her hair had been worse; she cringed from every touch and fled at the sight of combs. But a cat would calm if you brushed its fur the right way, at least; Arya was too sensitive for even that.

She hadn’t gentled for the maids, or for her mother. But she’d always been sweet for Jon, perched on the fence in the stableyard, babbling on about her day as he practiced braiding his horse’s mane, its tail with his clumsy child’s hands.

He’d never had the chance to try it with her, too see if he could tend to her without the hurt. If he could undo time, if he could give her something careful and tender to carry with her, he’d go back to that boyhood again and settle her between his knees and show with his hands the care he had for her. Arya’s body was a story in neglect. He wanted to help her feel precious again

Arya liked to be touched firmly, slow strokes of his fingers as he combed her hair through until t’was thick with soap. She hummed a little under her breath, a song Jon had never heard before.

Curiosity coiled in him. Once or twice her lady mother had ordered Arya’s hair trimmed to cut the worst of the tangles loose, but never so short as this. “Your hair,” he said at last, combing his fingers through the burgeoning curls. “Did you— Were you ill?”

His other hand kept the soap suds from her eyes, but it kept him from seeing them, too. All he had was her voice, hesitant, as she murmured, “Most mummers shave. It helps with wearing all those wigs.”

She’d always loved pretend, and story-telling. He’d used to play at being Daeron the Young Dragon, and her as Visenya. “I bet you were a good mummer,” he told her thoughtfully. Had she hacked at some man with a pretend sword then, and that fierce determined look that even play-fighting gave her?

“I was,” she said back. “But I didn’t want to be. I hated the man I worked for, and how people looked at me sometimes, and I didn’t, I didn’t want to keep shaving my head. I knew it would grow again. But all I could think was…”

She trailed to thick silence. Jon scraped soap-foam from her forehead and rinsed his hands in the bathwater. Her own thin fingers, scabbed and scarred, worried the mess of her knees; she’d curled tight as a nautilus again. 

Jon took her hands in his and waited till she looked at him again.

To have any of her be so foreign to him, any thought so strange and far that he couldn’t guess it, or read it from his face, chafed like ill-fit boots. Like wearing a stranger’s armor, pinching as it protected him, when he’d rather take the hurt. He wanted to know her again _now_. This was perhaps the only wound that couldn’t wait.

“What did you think?” he asked and squeezed her fingers gently. 

She didn’t want to tell him, blush stained her cheeks. But he was patient, and it eased her. At last Arya lowered her eyes, tears clinging to the thick lashes, and mumbled, “You used to muss my hair.”

He was struck blind by it, stunned. Her look was still wary, as if this was something she wasn’t allowed. Jon turned away, reaching for the ewer; he said quietly, “It’s grown a bit. Shall I find you a ribbon to tie through it, that I can come steal it and make you untidy again?”

Arya said, “Yes!” too loud and painfully earnest. 

Arya when she wanted things had wanted them with no reserve, no shame, no distance. That she wanted _this_ back with the same desperate grasping of her heart that she’d wanted horse-riding and sword-fighting and fairness for all the people she loved, it humbled him.

“Then I’ll fetch one tomorrow,” Jon promised. “Head back, now. And close your eyes.”

He rinsed the soap from her hair, careful to keep the water from her eyes, then set aside the ewer with a clatter. Her hair was soft on his fingers, familiar even in the shortness of it. And too, the way she flushed and turned into his touch, a secret language between them that lingered, speaking to them both, for the whole time he touched her.

Even with the fire so close, the bathwater was cooling. He liked little the thought of her growing chilled again when she’d just gotten warm. He’d worked too hard to make her warm again to let the winter take it back.

He stood, his knees creaking, and offered Arya a hand to help her rise. “It’s cold,” she complained, giving him a baleful look even as she clasped his wrist. 

“Aye, it’ll be even colder when the water cools,” he told her as she stepped from the tub. He was quick to fling a length of thick toweling about her shoulders, but it did little to stop her shiver, or the gooseflesh climbing her neck and racing down her legs. “Go stand by the fire,” Jon ordered.

Her hair was too short to need combing. The tray on the hearth was waiting, kept warm by the fireplace stones. Her hands— Jon didn’t have a true salve and he didn’t trust any maester that had served the Boltons to come around Arya, not when she was like this. Not so long as she was cracked open and peeled apart, shifted foot to foot on the wet floor and sniffled into her wrap.

He had a little bear grease in a pouch with his riding things, the free folks’ cure for everything from fleas to flux. White and soft as sealing wax, as bitter-scented as the berries they stewed it with, t’would be better than nothing. He unearthed it and turned back around.

Arya was still lingering by the tub. “Do you _want_ to catch a cold?” Jon asked, and made to take her arm, to brace her across the damp floor lest she slipped and fell.

She said, very patiently, in that way she had of speaking—that way Jon had almost forgotten—as though the maddest things she said made sense and t’was you who was the fool not to see it, “Aren’t you going to get in the water?”

She had her brows raised, in a thoughtful sort of way. Jon said slowly, “No,” and when her face fell, her chin lifting, he tried to coax her. “Are you not cold? Come by the fire; there’s supper there and I’ve something to put on your hands.”

Her chin lifted just a fraction more. Jon should’ve been surprised, but it only made sense in a heartbreaking way, how she told him firmly, thoughtlessly, “You said we would look at each other. And you’re just as tired as me, and dirty too,” and she let go half her wrap to flick a nail against his neck, where dirt had gathered, unable to fall past the tight lacing of his jerkin.

She wrinkled her nose a little, then plucked at the front of Jon’s shirt. “And you smell like horse,” she complained. “I don’t want to sleep next to you if you go to bed smelling like horse.”

He loved her so much it hurt. “Little sister,” Jon said, catching her hand in his, “you’ve spent the last however many days sleeping _on_ your horse. You cannot possibly complain now, when I’ve only been a day riding.”

She twisted her hand until she could fit her fingers in the spaces between his. “I only did that because I had to,” she said back. And her eyes, so fine and sweet, told him, _We don’t have to anymore. We don’t have to drag our tired bodies through the mud, not when there’s someone here to help us keep walking._

Jon had always been defenseless in the face of her. He passed her the leather pouch, fat with grease inside it, and stripped his wet shirt up off his head.

He hadn’t forgotten about the scars. He couldn’t; the cold made them ache and t’was always cold now. But Arya had always known all of him, and it was so easy, with her come home to him, to fit themselves back into those familiar spaces again. 

He’d forgotten she didn’t know about this yet. It was too late to cover himself again. He wasn’t nearly ashamed enough of the scars to flinch. But he hadn’t wanted to hurt her; he was sorry for that.

Her eyes went wide, wet with tears almost at once. But before she could speak—she didn’t need to speak, the fat tear that crept down her cheek said it same as a scream—he said, “Go sit by the fire.”

She hesitated. He didn’t want to explain right then. News down in the Neck was that he’d betrayed the Night’s Watch, news in White Harbor that the free folk had done it, news in the Vale that t’was an Other’s own hand. He didn’t know what Arya had heard, wherever she’d been, and he couldn’t bear to tell her the real cause.

Arya wouldn’t hear, _I was trying to save you_ , without taking from Jon’s mouth words that had never been there. That would never be there. _T’was your fault_.

“Later,” he rasped. “Alright? Later. I don’t want you to be cold.” If it sounded like pleading, that was only because it was. “Will you please go by the fire?”

She turned her eyes back to his face. Arya loved him too much to want to hurt him back. She swallowed, and wiped her eyes, and threatened, “If fair’s fair, I should stay and scrub you.” 

Twelve and lashed with growing pains, muscles stiff and aching from knocking Robb across the yard with practice steel, of being knocked back himself, Jon had spent most nights on the verge of exhausted tears. Lady Catelyn used to sit beside Robb’s bed and knead the knots from his shoulders and legs, talking all the while, a little of Robb’s grandfather and mostly of his uncle, and how Lady Catelyn had helped Edmure Tully grow up too.

Jon had been bitterly alone; t’was Arya who’d badgered Maester Luwin into showing her how to do the same. One long hot day he’d spread himself across the grass and she’d straddled his waist and worked his back with her small hands until he could lift his sword without miserable groaning.

He wanted nothing more than her hands on him again. And she wanted it too; she kneaded the edge of her wrap between her fingers, her mouth an unhappy little frown.

Want strung him tight as a trap-line in a heavy stream. But she was still shivering, little shakes wracking her body. “Next time,” Jon offered, a compromise, as he chafed some warmth back into her exposed arm.

She narrowed her eyes at him, that dangerously stubborn look. When Jon had hated himself, his bastardy, his weaknesses, Arya had tried to love him enough to make up the difference. She loved him still, and he was weak with it. “I swear,” he said, so softly. To neglect himself, to refuse her care, that was a wound he couldn’t bear to give himself anymore.

She gave in to the shivers and crossed to stand near the fire, then sat very gingerly on the hearth. The firelight limned her gold as she bent her head and knocked water from her hair.

The water was cold enough to be unpleasant. Jon undressed, fast, and stepped over the tubside, reaching already for the soap. _He_ wasn’t all over bruises at least, just sore, and so he could be fast, and rough in his fastness.

Arya said from her careful perch, “Oh! _Bread_.”

Jon didn’t need to ask if she’d starved. He scrubbed dust off his neck, watching as she so carefully broke a piece of bread away and ate it, then licked crumbs from her fingers with the fastidious of a little mouse. 

It hurt to look at her, almost, folded up as she was like a bundle of weirwood sticks. He scrubbed his hands, scraped dirt and ink from under the short half-moons of his nails.

Arya was examining a piece of cheese now, tearing away the tiniest slivers and chewing them impossibly slowly. A man could become ill too easily if he ate rich food when he was starving, but Jon couldn’t bear the thought of feeding her a bowl of murky brown, the same as all the smallfolk were eating. 

T’would fill her belly just as well, but same as Arya couldn’t bear the thought of Jon contenting himself to be cold and grimy and reeking of horse, he couldn’t bear the thought of her scraping year-old beans into her mouth and proclaiming she was satisfied.

She liked her tray better than the broth, at least. Her attention wandered back to him, peeking looks, but most of her was focused on the tray. He was glad of it, that he’d chosen right. 

He doused himself with the last of the clean water, dumping the ewer straight over his head, and shook water out of his eyes and off the cold clinging strands of his hair like a dog. 

Arya was watching him back now fully, turning half a dried apple over and over in her hands. She laughed at him when he shook, cheery-bright, her cheeks packed full of the apple’s other half. “Did Ghost teach you that?” she teased him, and it was apple sweet.

There was another length of towelling, water-speckled now. Jon scrubbed it across his hair, then wrapped himself in it, more to keep off the chill than from any pretense of modesty. 

“I saw him, you know,” Arya went on. Her mouth twisted to a frown, but a look down at the tray brought her smiling again. “A few days ago, mayhaps. He came for Nymeria and they went north together.”

Jon crossed to the fire, trying not to shiver. There was more meat on him than Arya had, a knight’s bulky muscle, a slowly disappearing bit of fat, but t’was still good to sink down on the hearthrug, settled just below and beside her, and feel the heat of the fire wash over him. 

Arya had her hand out, offering him the other half of the apple; he took it and told her, “I thought he was hunting. He goes off on his own now, sometimes.”

“Nymeria too,” Arya agreed. “She’s got a pack now, and it seemed unfair to try and keep her near me when I was the one to send her away. But she always comes back now.” And another unhappy look. Musingly, she added, “I think she saved my life, coming back when she did. And, and Ghost, too.”

She held her hands to the fire, warming them. Jon could imagine it too easily, the cold, the fear. If she hadn’t meant to come to Winterfell, had Ghost more than the banners brought her?

The edges of old hurt lingered in them both. Later, he’d share that most secret fear of his, that Jon’s death had left Ghost as something more complicated than a wolf. He’d ask to hear from her how Nymeria was lost, not just the jumbled tale of Hallis Mollen’s frantic explanation, told so faintly when he’d creaked to his knees before Jon with their father’s bones and news on both Jon’s sisters. 

Arya saw his hesitance. She put her hand to his head and combed through the tangled mass of his wet hair. The apple was sweet on his tongue, tough to his teeth. Jon leaned forward until he could rest his forehead to Arya’s bony knee.

“T’is strange,” she murmured. She touched him hesitantly, then rougher when he didn’t protest, dragging her nails across his scalp. “Your hair is longer than mine. Messier, too.”

“Aye,” Jon agreed. A quarter of an apple now, sticky in his hand. “My stitches are worse than yours now. That’s stranger.”

She laughed, an unexpected chirp. “Do you remember what Septa Mordane used to say?” Arya asked. “She said I had the hands of a blacksmith.”

“You were always underfoot in Mikken’s forge.” Arya had been underfoot everywhere, making the oddest of friends. It wasn’t surprising such a sour dried-up woman had hated her; Arya drew love to herself like candles drew moths. “Mayhaps she got confused, after squinting at stitches all damn day instead of teaching you something useful.”

Arya hummed. It felt impossibly good to speak to her in the language of their childhood, those things for which there was no one but them left to remember. “Eat your supper,” Jon said as she combed a tangle from his hair, her fingers careful and clever not to pull.

“I think the Lannisters killed her,” Arya whispered, and took her hand away.

He hadn’t felt so tired before, but it came over him in a wave, just then. “Are we sad about that?” he teased, but his heart was gone from it. T’was all of Father’s household, truly. Hallis Mollen had come to Winterfell bleeding; he’d died a fortnight later in his bed.

Arya shifted, tired bones uneasy on solid stone. He wouldn’t have her be melancholy when he was there to take her out of it. Jon tugged at her ankle, wrapped his hand around her knee, that the heat of his palm could ease it. “Come here,” Jon said and she slid down to the floor, then crawled closer to curl into his side.

T’was a moment’s work to tug her wrap higher on her shoulder, to pull the tray down after her and break apart the loaf of bread, thick with currents and honey and nuts. Arya stuck half the piece in her mouth at once, an enormous bite.

“Were you hungry often?” Jon asked, and stroked the neat ruin of her hair until she was leant against him and easy again.

“Sometimes,” she said when she was done chewing. Between little licks of her hands, chasing the last of the honey, she asked, “Were you?”

“Aye,” Jon said. She’d ignored the slices of venison, rough from the smoke and tender all inside, but opened her mouth for it when he offered. “When I was ranging, mostly,” Jon went on, feeling the motion of her jaw against his shoulder as she chewed. His thumb lingered at the corner of her mouth; she took his wrist and licked salty grease from his hand too, a soft wet heat against the very pads of his fingers. 

She ate from his plate often enough as a child. This was no different. “But the Wall has onion soup enough for every man that serves there,” he murmured, letting her even as it worked a thrill deep down in his belly. “And there’s game across the Wall, if you’re quick enough to catch it.” 

He fed her another slice, and she kissed his fingers when she was done. “It wasn’t hunger that bothered me so much,” he admitted as she let him go.

She reached for the tray, tearing up the last of the bread. When she put one of the pieces to his mouth, he ate it from her hand. Sweetness on his tongue was rare now; the other lords ate at the high table, but most often Jon took trays in the war room, or sat arguing among the other men, all of them hunched over the weak soup. 

Arya watched him, waiting sweet and docile and keen to hear. He said, hushed, “Mostly I was cold. Or frightened, sometimes.”

Or angry. Despairing. Once, with Ygritte, he’d felt the first sweet blossom of something that might have someday grown to love. But he didn’t tell her that. Later when they were both less raw, he could confess to it, to wanting to stay with Ygritte, without Arya feeling it a betrayal.

Arya said now, just as quiet as him, “I was frightened too. Sometimes I thought t’would kill me.”

There in the shelter of his arm, she ate another piece of apple. A cloth tied around a shying horse’s eyes, a confession in unsteady murmurs between bites, because to treat it as nothing was the only way to keep from falling apart. She told him, chewing, “And after Mother and Robb died, I didn’t feel anything. For, for a while.”

“Me neither,” Jon told her, tucking her up closer. Her wrap was drying, her hair still damp. She smelled of soap and honey and her eyes were screaming. It hurt almost too much to touch on, to talk about. Robb had been his brother and his friend and his rival; Robb had been Arya’s brother too, her knight, her hero. It hadn’t seemed possible, to hear the words.

It hadn’t seemed possible Robb could fall.

“I used to pretend it, when I couldn’t sleep,” Arya murmured. “Finding Robb. Robb finding me. I used to think maybe he— he might not ransom me if someone caught me and tried to sell me back.”

His eyes burned. That she could doubt it, that she could ever doubt it, stirred so much hurt that he could barely breathe. “Robb loved you,” Jon said, as unyielding as stone.

“A king,” Arya said with murmured heartbreak, heartbreak gone old and familiar, “can’t put his sister above the realm, no matter how much he loves her.”

Just that, just those handful of words, ran like icemelt down his spine. He couldn’t speak. He didn’t dare say anything. She’d carried this with her, carried it rotting inside her for so very long.

“I used to pretend about you, too,” she went on, turning to rest her cheek on his skin. Stroking over hurts so old that pink flesh had grown over an infection still kept deep inside. Her hand was a fist in his own wrap. “About going to the Wall. How you’d hug me, and muss my hair, and call me little sister. I was—”

Her voice was thin, just at the edge of breaking. Enough, he thought wildly. Enough. Jon kicked the tray away, reached for her as she forced out miserably through the threat of her tears, “I used to be glad you weren’t king. I know it hurt you, not to be, to be like the rest of us—”

_To be trueborn._

“—but I didn’t care. I was so glad for it,” Arya told him in hitching little hiccups. “I was so _happy_ you’d never have to choose— I think it would have killed me,” and she was reaching back, trying hard to swallow down her cries. 

He was ill with it, sick with the words, with the need to hold her. He hauled her into his lap, bony and shivering and fever-hot where she’d sat too close to the fire after so long in the cold. “If you were king,” she wept, and he felt the tears wetting his chest, his neck, “and you didn’t, you couldn’t trade for me back, it would have _killed_ me. I would have died. I was so happy you’d never have it. _Jon_ —”

If t’was anyone else who made her weep such high frantic cries, as if someone had put their hand around her heart and squeezed, they wouldn’t have lived long. Jon would have struck them dead. He would have parted head from neck in a single bloody stroke.

But he was unmanned in the face of her sobbing, unmanned by the grief and love she had for him. “Don’t,” he begged. “Don’t,” and she sobbed out, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” like the words were knives come to cut her throat. 

He had no bandages for this. It came from the cellars of her heart, this wailing, and refused to be stemmed by word or touch. Something in her had broken to say it. Jon could do nothing but hold her and rock her and press his own wet face to the short silky curls of her hair.

It was Arya’s own heart that was breaking, and she who was breaking it, her own hand wormed between her ribs with a vengeful squeeze. He knew her shame at it as surely as he’d ever known her mind, that her secret happiness lay like stones on her chest.

All his life, Jon had wanted nothing more than to be Ned Stark’s trueborn son, and she knew it. But Arya had loved him best because he was not. He felt stunned with it, wild with it. Her ragged fingernails were leaving bloody lines across his shoulders and neck.

“Don’t hate me,” she choked out, hysterical. “Please, _please_. I cannot— Jon, I can’t—”

All her life, _all her life_ , she had been alone in her heart but for him. And all his life, too, save those five empty years before her, times he couldn’t even remember anymore beyond the lingering scraps of loneliness and fear. 

And then Arya, and her love like the sun as it broke over him. Arya had been the dark Stark, the strange Stark, and Jon had been the bastard. But it had gone beyond looks, the pair of them. It had been the wolf-child girl and the sullen unwanted boy. It had been a solitude so boundless and inescapable, a melancholy homesickness that could have driven them mad for lack of no one understanding it.

No one had ever known Jon the way Arya had. And he had been the only one to peer in her most secret and sacred heart. They were twins of each other, reflections reaching for each other in a mirror. 

Could he have understood her as he did if he’d been anyone other than Jon _Snow_? Would she have felt even half so adoring of him, even a fraction so devoted if he hadn’t joined her in that cool and narrow place between the hearth fire of their family, and the endlessly barren world of that unlooked-for, untrodden-upon summer snow?

She wept as if she was dying, and t’was killing him to hear. “Shh,” Jon said, a hoarse scrape from his throat. He pressed her closer, frantic skin to frantic skin. Gods but if he could carve open his own chest and press her there! If he could but coax her into curling small and quiet as a suckling pup next to his heart, where the bone and meat of him might shield her from any blow.

He couldn’t imagine a world where Arya wasn’t his heart—the most precious, the most treasured.

Would Jon have loved her less, if he’d been another red-headed Tully son? Loved her different if their father had wed Jon’s mother, and loved her, and lost her after Jon came into the world?

He couldn’t love her better, he knew that. He couldn’t love this girl more than he did now, absolutely, with all of his body and spirit and heart. It would have killed Arya if duty and birth had made Jon turn her away; it would have surely killed him too. 

He’d cast aside the Night’s Watch vows for her, and thrown over a hundred brothers he neither loved nor wanted. He’d torn his honor to the smallest shreds. He’d cried to the world that Jon had a bastard’s black heart and a bastard’s black blood on the smallest chance that such a truth would let him hold her safe again.

But what had he had at the Wall, that he’d valued above Arya? Nothing, not even himself. T’was no contest to prove himself rotten to men who had long believed it, not if it meant bringing her home.

But if better birth had placed a crown upon Jon’s head, heavier than the regent’s bronze circle he wore now— 

If Robb’s will had named Jon heir above Bran and Rickon because t’was Jon’s right and duty, not for fear that they were dead—

If t’was the whole of the North or Arya he had to choose between, victory for their people, _freedom_ for their people—

Arya gave a final shuddering hiccuping sob and fell limp against his chest. She had no more strength, Jon thought. She’d used so much of it coming home to him, and the rest in this. Confessing her greatest sin, that he might judge her or cast her out as he saw fit.

He loved her so much it had killed him. Jon half-wished he could die again, for the easy uncomplicated peace it had given him. Those three days and three nights beyond a world in which pain and suffering seemed too great to bear.

But Arya hadn’t been in the dark, not even the faintest whisper of her laugh, or the softest most hesitant press of her body to his. The want of peace faded in him like ink left in the sun. He couldn’t bear to leave her again.

He cradled her head in his hand, the vulnerable curve of her skull, and said in smeared kisses to her forehead, her temple, her cheek, “I don’t care. I don’t care. Gods, how could you ever think—”

He would take five years of loneliness and pain, he’d take a hundred years of bitter war, every slight he’d ever suffered against himself, every harsh word or ugly knowing look, if it meant he might look into her eyes again and see that understanding as she looked back, more precious than diamonds, more precious than dragonglass.

“Arya,” tender and chiding and coaxing, “Arya, look at me. Little sister, _please_ ,” and she pushed up against his chest, her hands splayed across the scars that papered him there, eyes so red and swollen that he knew they pained her.

He didn’t know how to say it, how to make into words the sudden starburst of fear and love and pain crowding his chest. He kissed her, instead. A tender press of his lips to her cheeks, to the tip of her nose, to her brow and all across the curious scar that ran the length of it now.

Her eyes, then the very tips of her lashes, soft as snowfall on an outstretched hand. The sharp point of her chin, the edges of her jaw where the bone pressed starving-close to the skin. 

The corners of her mouth, and then across it fully, as sweet and chaste a kiss he’d ever given her when they were children.

She shuddered with it, and when he pulled away, shoved herself back in close. His lips were rich with salt now, with honey. Understanding was as warm as a wedding cloak about him, in his keeping only for the time it took to grow warm from his body, the time it took to say those vows beneath the great heart tree. 

He loved her more than anything. More than summer, more than sunlight, more than dragons. And it was dangerous, to love her so much when the world wanted to cast more and more weight upon Jon’s back.

But if he would trade a true and honest name for her, there was nothing he wouldn’t cast away on a whispered word, a single plea.

He’d hated his father, sometimes. He’d hated himself. _Snow_ , and every playful time that Robb had called him that, it was a secret knife into his flesh. But Jon couldn’t hate something Arya loved so much and so dearly.

He’d lost every chance of having a lord’s life, of having an honorable name, of having trueborn children he might give that name to, lost it from the very moment he’d been born. And all his life, Jon had known it, had mourned it, had resented it.

To take the vows of the Night’s Watch hadn’t felt like a concession when Jon had already thought that all his life he couldn’t have what they barred him from.

The wildlings had japed, when Jon woke from three days of peace, that his vows were done, the gods were satisfied. They hadn’t been the only ones who felt that way; Stannis, when Winterfell was retaken, had offered him that poisoned deal again. 

But that had been before news had crawled up to Winterfell’s gates with Howland Reed at the column head, with his assuring dreams that Bran lived, with Old Mormont’s raven cawing in a boy’s voice, “Alive! Alive! Four and you, alive!”

How many months had Jon held Winterfell in his own name, thinking himself the last, yet had made no move to ensure that there would be a Stark there for years to come, a Stark to sit it even after his death? 

He might’ve at last satisfied the pained wanting he’d known all his life. He might’ve taken a wife and gotten children on her. Stannis would have legitimized him even if Jon didn’t consent to burn the godswood down, so desperate was he to be backed by the North. 

Even when Howland Reed had come, even after Jon learned Robb’s love and trust had given him this—Jon’s children would be named _Stark_ —he’d made no move.

He’d been so uneasy in it. The men had hailed him as Stark and all the while Jon had felt a queer unrest.

Jon _Snow_ had no name, no hope, no future. But he’d had this, this girl and the deep warm weight of her love. The understanding he’d found nowhere else. The weight of her body on his lap, and the wet cheek tucked to his neck, and the knowledge that wherever life and war and fear had taken her, she’d still loved him enough, _wanted_ him enough, to claw her way back home.

If he’d been born to be a king, he’d never even know to _miss_ it. T’was an unbearable thought—to even imagine it made his chest ache. Arya’s back was all gooseflesh under his hand, her knuckles a horror as he took her hand from his chest and bent their fingers together.

“I love you,” Jon said to her. “Don’t ever be sorry— Don’t you ever dare ask me to forgive you. There’s _nothing_ to forgive.”

She gasped, hot and wet against his neck. “Little sister,” Jon said, just to have the words in his mouth. “Little sister,” and it was better he’d ever felt in his life to say it, sweet and good as spring mead on his tongue. He felt dizzy with it, his love for her, as he crooned, “Let me look after your hands. Will you? You can stay there—” he soothed to the nervous shake of her head, “—just where you are. Only let me, please.”

She mumbled, very wetly, “Your hands need it more.”

Never had there been a girl more easy to love, and Jon of all people had been the one blessed with a right to it. How could he ever set that aside? How could he ever grudge her for loving him back? “Your hands first,” he said, reaching for the leather pouch she’d cast aside in favor of her supper. “And then you can see to mine.”

He shifted her on his lap, that he could better reach her hands, and she let him with a little sigh. Arya wasn’t so small against him, Jon realized, t’was just that she made herself smaller, to better fit where she’d pressed herself to him before. 

But settled on his leg, tucked to his chest with his arm about her back and her hands in his, he could tell better that she’d grown. They were eye to eye like this, and her long greedy looks at his face soothed Jon better than anything else.

_I feel just the same_ , he said with how carefully he worked grease into her cuticles, the raw red tips of her fingers, across each of the joints where the skin threatened to break. He smoothed it over the worst of the red patches on the backs of her hands, and the dried skin of her wrists. And then tenderly, he kneaded grease into her knuckles, until the stiffly pained little gasps she gave eased away to shivery little sighs.

First one hand, then the other. She had a swordsman’s callouses now, and other rough marks, the ground-deep signs of laborers’ work. These hands had held him, they’d soothed him, they’d laid bandages on his wounds. These hands, so many years ago, had gripped his fingers when he’d peered into Arya’s cradle, those chubby babe’s fists and every time he’d kissed them she’d laughed uproariously. 

These hands had taken and held as if they were the finest treasures everything Jon had ever offered them—the ribbons and odd rocks and pretty leaves he’d carried back to the nursery, the reins of ponies and more than once of his own horse. The inky quill in her first writing lessons, which he’d switched to her swordhand, the left, with such a glare that Maester Luwin hadn’t dared object to it.

Jon had put a sword in these hands once, and by Arya’s own tearful confession, he knew that these hands had killed. He couldn’t promise she’d never need do such things again. Blood had dirtied these hands, and the foulness of life, but they were no more dirty than his own.

Tenderly, he smoothed grease in the hollows between her fingers and worked it across her palms.

Twice Arya made as if to speak, drawing in breath, but stayed silent. Finally, as he folded her hands between his own, and turned his look to her face, she said, “You don’t hate me for it,” still a little frightened.

“No,” Jon said. He played with her fingers now, felt the changed strength of her grasp. “There’s nothing you could ever do that’d make me feel such a way.”

“When I used to think about it, about you,” Arya said, and tugged his hands until he looked at her face again, “I used to think, ‘Jon will always want me’. No matter if I got fleas, or my hair was all chopped off like a boy’s, or if I killed somebody. Jon would still want me. But I didn’t, I don’t—”

Arya had such a tender heart. Wound it, and she’d carry the wound for ages, years. She said, with her lashes wet with tears, “Why? Why don’t you—”

“Would you have loved me less, if I’d been fully your brother, instead of only half?” he asked. “If Lady Catelyn was my mother, or Father had wed my mother and I’d come before Robb?”

She jerked in his lap, scrambling, kneed him in the side so hard he lost his breath as she made to kneel and cup his face in her hands. “No!” and there were tears in her eyes. “No, how could you think that—”

“I don’t,” Jon assured her. “Hush, no. You would still love me, I know. But would you have loved me _different_ , if I was trueborn and red-haired like the rest?”

She said nothing, only looked at him and sunk her teeth deep into her lip. 

“You would have, same as I would. Neither of us could help it. But I like the way you love me now,” Jon told her. He brushed his thumb across her cheek, across the bruise there that he’d get to watch as it faded to pale skin again. He coaxed her poor abused lip free. “I like the way you love me now,” he confessed, watching her fine bright eyes. “Nothing’s so dear to me than that. I wouldn’t change it, little sister, not for anything.”

“If I wouldn’t want to give it up, what made us what we are to each other, why should you?”

He knew the answer, but still asked with his own eyes, with the hand on her waist to steady her as she shifted back to perch on his thighs. _Would_ you _? Is there something in the world you’d give this up for?_

She looked down, away. Shy in her pleasure, same as when she was a girl and overwhelmed by happiness. He waited, patient, pleased enough to just hold her and caress her cheek as she thought it over so seriously.

Arya was reaching for the bear grease now; she turned her head, snake-quick, and nipped at the pad of his thumb, then soothed the bite with a kiss. _Don’t ask me that, stupid_ , the look from the corner of her eye said. _‘Course I wouldn’t_. 

She’d always been able to make him smile. Jon mussed her hair and watched with deep satisfaction that if t’was just a little bit wet, the curls stayed sticking straight up all over her head. When she scowled at him, her mouth a-tremble to keep it from smiling, and reached to smooth her hair back down, he trapped her hands with his.

“You said you’d look after me,” Jon reminded her. “Aye, and complained all this while about my hands looking so poor. So will you do something about it, or ought we go to bed now?”

She wrinkled her nose at him even as she giggled, teasing back, “I should have let Jeyne give me my bath,” taking his hands in hers all the while.

Arya had a practiced maester’s hand, a maester’s gimlet eye; she turned her focus to his burned hand first thing, and worked grease into his palm, digging her thumbs in deep. Jon grunted, feeling the pained stretch, then under her hands, something went loose, six seconds’ sharpness followed by deep relief.

He groaned, took his hand away, and stretched it. He could hold a pen, hold a sword, hold a horse’s reins, but it wasn’t comfortable if he did it long enough. Arya was saying, “Give that back, I’m not done!” and he surrendered it again.

“I told you someone needed look after you,” she scolded, friendly, as she worked his fingers one by one, as Jon reveled in the sensation of muscle stretched too far and finally relaxing.

“Aye,” he said, meaning, _I needed you_. And she heard it, flushing red all down her face and across her neck. Fascinated, he put his free hand to her neck, touched the hot skin there at her collarbone.

“Tell me if this hurts too much,” Arya said, low, and gave his hand one final brutal stretch, her face all pleased concentration. 

Jon bit the inside of his cheek and stroked petal-soft across the base of her neck. When she finally let his fingers relax, he said thoughtfully, “Do you remember when Ser Rodrik first let me use the practice steel?”

“Aye,” Arya said. She smoothed across his knuckles, then lay his hand in her lap, reaching for the other. Eyes still lowered, she said, “I could do that again. If, if you like.”

Her shoulders were charmingly pink, the top of her chest. Mayhaps even below the wrap; Arya used to blush down to her belly when they’d gone swimming and Jon had teased her too much. 

He wanted her hands on him, the comfort of something so simple and so complicated as a touch. And he could have it now again, a feast after so long with an empty belly. Gorging himself on this couldn’t make him sick, but he wanted to savor it still. “Later,” Jon said, and let her see to his other hand, surrendering it so easily to her care.

They were quiet as she worked, a good silence, the silence of people who didn’t need words with each other. Arya kept glancing up at his face, kept smiling that slow and brilliant smile, sweet with understanding that he was there. Sweet with confessing and learning that there was no crime at all, but to doubt him.

Now she set aside the little pouch of grease, and her touches to his hands were absent-minded as she played with his fingers, learned the shape of his hands again. She murmured, “Your hands are bigger now,” never mind that hers were too, long and slim against the blunt broadness of his own. And then, her tiredness peaking through, “I missed you. Gods, but I did.”

T’was still too raw a wound for but the most gentle of teasing. But even after she’d handed him a dozen of them, a hundred, he still craved her smiles. “Did you?” he teased, and jostled his leg, that she had to catch herself against his chest. “And here I thought t’was some other half-brother you were so eager to see again.”

She laughed, a jewel in his hand, a perfect beam of summer sun in a winter snowstorm, warm and beautiful enough to break his heart. “Since I have so many of those lying about,” Arya agreed.

She settled closer and laid her hands to his, palm to palm. “I missed you too,” Jon told her, though he knew she didn’t doubt it. “You used to pretend about going to the Wall to find me?” At her slow nod, “I used to pretend the same, that you would turn up there someday, all dirt and scabs and wild hair, shouting out my name.”

How often had he taken out that fantasy, worn-thin and dependable, to turn his mind away long enough to complete some grim task? Another set of sword maneuvers, another foul bowl of bloody soup, another sleepless hour before exhaustion dragged him under.

But it wasn’t the full truth, and she gave a little hum, to coax the rest of it from him.

She measured her hands against his, and it struck Jon how different they were now than last time they’d laid their hands together. “I didn’t truly want you there with me,” Jon confessed. “The Wall, the Watch—it’s all horrible. There’s little honor there, just the worst of men and none of them glad or grateful for their jobs. Once—” and his voice was hoarse with remembered horror, “they sang Brave Danny Flint in the halls, and laughed about her fate. What kind of man could want that for his sister?”

“But you wanted me,” Arya said, soft and sure. A gentle hand smoothing over the bruise.

He folded his fingers around hers, laced them together and bent his head to kiss her narrow wrists. “More than anything,” he told her. “More than anything, I wanted you near.”

“Would you—” and her own voice caught in her throat. When he looked up, her eyes were wet with tears. “Would you have gone away with me?” she asked hoarsely, and Jon knew her well enough to know, knew himself well enough to remember from all the times he’d thought of it, how sweet a nursery story it was, that t’was something she’d told herself to ease the sting.

“Yes,” he said. He’d cast aside his vows on the merest chance of her; to have Arya with him for true wouldn’t have even been a choice, so obvious Jon’s actions would’ve been. 

Tomorrow, he thought, when they were both less raw, he’d tell her about Bolton and his bastard. About how Jon had broken his vows on the strength of her name alone. “If you’d shown up there, yes. I’d have taken you across the sea, to Braavos, or Pentos.”

Her eyes were shining. She said, very shyly, “You would like Braavos, I think.”

He let go her fingers, taking her arms carefully and drawing her closer, until he could tuck her face to his neck, until she was sprawled all warm and bony across his lap. The ridge of her spine was little hills and dips under fingers, and he kissed her damp clean hair before daring to ask, his own throat tight, “Was that where you were? Braavos?”

She nodded, then set her lips to his shoulder in a warm chaste little press. “I’ll tell you,” she promised. “Everything, there’s so much that’s happened—”

“But tomorrow,” and they said it together, a small chorus that would always make Jon smile. He pressed another kiss to her temple and felt her hand raise, brave enough at last, to touch with intention the scars across his chest.

“Do they hurt?” she asked, small and uncertain. “The scarring’s all red.”

The knife that had done it, it had reached for Jon’s very heart itself. But no blade was so great that it could span the mass of the Narrow Sea. “Aches,” he said, “in the cold.”

She sat back, left her fingertips to linger. “Let’s be warm then,” she said. She gave a rough scrub of her hand to the scars, all that she could reach, as if she could erase them with a touch. And then Arya was clambering off his lap and tossing aside her wrap, her own body scar-speckled, dark lines across the backs of her legs and her ass as she walked away. Switch marks, Jon thought, and they didn’t make her ugly, but they were ugly to look at, those faded lines that proved the roughness he couldn’t shelter her from.

He wanted to ask. He wanted, badly, to lay her out on the thickest of his furs and touch each scar, trace the paths of them as she told him what lay behind those marks. He wanted to know her body again, wanted to learn the limits of all the cat-sleek muscles shifting under her skin.

Arya had been a terror as a child. He wanted, Jon was realizing, to see her take her sword in hand, that slimly dangerous rapier, and to let her fight him with it. Every time they’d wrestled as children, she’d fought him as fiercely as a shadow-cat. But he’d been so much bigger than her then, and so often t’was Jon pinning her under him and tickling her until she was red and shrieking out ecstatic laughter.

They would be better matched now. It was growing too hot here by the fire. Jon rolled to his feet and stood, aching from her weight on his lap, from sitting on the floor.

Arya was slow to approach his bed, hesitant. She didn’t seem to care about his eyes on her; t’was the bed itself she paced around, like a wolf uncertain of where to den. Had she truly been so used to sleeping on horseback, to sleeping in the root hollows of trees and the sides of roads?

But after a shifting moment, getting colder each second, she threw back the bedclothes and gave him an imperious look. He was helpless against her; he couldn’t not give her what she wanted, not now when he wanted it so much, too. He came and pressed a hand to the small of her back, saying, “In bed with you, then.”

She crawled up to perch in the center, then lay flat and starfished across the breadth of it. “It’s soft,” she said in the same tones of delight as when she’d announced that there was bread.

“I had it changed just for you,” Jon teased. “Stuffed my mattress with rocks, before.” He watched as she turned her cheek to hide her giggle to the bedclothes, and rested a hand on her ankle as he asked, “Will you move, that I might come to bed.”

She cracked an eye open to peer at him, and shook her head. “ _You_ can’t yet,” she said and yawned.

He loved her always, but especially like this, making mischievous little games for him to play. No one else had indulged her so endless; Jon had gotten to horde this just to himself. “Why not?” he asked, and made to drag her to the side, saying, “Is there a reason, or are you just being greedy and wanting all the furs?”

“No,” she protested. “I’m not.” And then as he gave her a doubtful look, playing, she added, “I need a shirt to wear.”

He turned to the chest of his clothes, then back to raise a brow at her, _This, my lady?_ and she kicked out at him, crying, “No, you stupid! One you’ve worn.”

“Aye, alright Your Highness,” he said and went around the dressing screen to where his nightshirt hung. T’would be too big on her, and thinner than a winter nightgown should be, but Jon thought he could keep her warm enough despite it. “Why, exactly?” he called as he snatched it from the hook.

As he came back around, he slowed at the odd look on her face even as she shifted, making room for him. “What’s that for?” he asked, making the same face back at her as he crawled up the bed and held the shirt for her to put on.

She made no move to do it herself, but gave a pleased noise when he dressed her as if she was a babe in arms again, putting her arms up to make it easier, then letting him lean in to fuss with the ties at her neck. As he did, she told him very slowly, “I _am_ a princess now.”

He laughed, finishing the pretty little knot and bow, same he’d used to tie in her overskirt strings when she’d had the patience to hold still long enough for it. “You are,” he said and chucked her chin just to make her wrinkle her nose at him. 

“Odd to think,” he laughed, “a girl who ate so much mud, and couldn’t seem to spare her skirts from tears, and drove her mother, and her sister, and her septa, _and_ her nursery-maid to distraction, is the girl I’ll have to watch curtsy to all the ladies tomorrow.”

“I’m wearing breeches tomorrow,” Arya announced with great satisfaction, “so you won’t have to, no.”

He wanted to dress her in yearling wool spun fine as hair, and silk, and the most expensive lace from Myr. He wanted to swing a cloak of shadow-cat fur about her shoulders, and drip diamonds and rubies and gold over her. Jon didn’t want a single person to look at Arya and doubt her worth to him.

“I cannot tempt you into a dress?” he asked, but tugged her close, their legs tangling, kicking at each other, to soften the question. She knew he wouldn’t force him; she knew he’d understand as she smoothed down his nightshirt where it rested on her thigh and said back, “I can’t run in dresses, or fight in them. I don’t— I do not like those clothes.”

He let it lie. The Mormonts were fond of split-skirts; he might offer her those in a day or two. “Do you like _these_ clothes?” he asked and took her hand away where it fussed at the hem, high on her long legs.

Arya lifted her head a little and opened her eyes wide, that he might be sure to see how she rolled them. But her sauciness was spoiled; she cracked into a yawn and her words afterwards were half a mumble. “’Course I do. They’re yours.”

Arya used to always take his things, and t’was Jon who Father chided for it. Jon had felt confusion every time, even as he mumbled promises that he wouldn’t let it happen again. But it felt normal to him, good even, that Arya felt the same protective possessiveness over Jon’s own things that made Jon grit his teeth and shout at Robb when he so much as borrowed an unused quill.

He’d never questioned it, how she liked his things above her own. It had never bothered him, so he’d never truly asked. Now though, he was greedy to keep Arya’s secrets again, eager to hear her thoughts.

“But why did you want it?” he asked. “I don’t grudge it to you, it’ll be warm enough bare-skinned if you still sleep like you did before—” and the arm slung over her side, the leg he tucked over hers said it, _So eager to conquer my space_ , same as it said, Come in and take it, you’re welcome here, “—but why do you—”

Lying on their sides like this, so close their noses almost brushed, it was easy to see her look to him, cheerful and tender disgust in Jon’s stupidity. “The shirt you wear,” Arya said to him as if he were slow, “smells like you.”

T’was overly warm just lying there, even without the bedclothes pulled up. “And you like the way I smell?” Jon asked, so surprised and charmed at how obvious she thought it.

She sighed out a little laugh, and flicked his chin, saying, “Aye, when it’s not being overpowered by horse.”

T’was fitting punishment to roll onto his back, dragging her close and letting her nest between his arm and his body. She sank in there, a space that Jon thought had always been made just for her, and put her hand above his heart.

“You’re one to talk,” Jon told her, feeling the muscles of his back unknotting, feeling the candlelight getting harsher across his face. He’d have to get up and pinch the candles out, and tug the furs up to keep Arya from freezing in the night, and bar the door so the ash-girl didn’t startle them awake before the sun was even up.

“Oh,” she said, kneeing him gently, sinking her weight onto him as he grabbed at her leg, hitched it higher till she was almost lying on him. “Oh, says the man who put me on my first horse!”

Arya, four and perched in the saddle, had given Harwin such a mistrustful look. If her laughter dragged all the smallfolk closer, her tears had sent everyone around her scrambling to make them stop. Jon had been the one to set her in the saddle, and t’was little work on his part, with her threatening sniffles, to get the lead rein in his hand.

The hour was later than Jon thought. Both of them jolted as the candles guttered, one after another. In the sudden rosy dark, Arya turned her cheek to muffle her sleepy laughter into his chest.

It was better than dream wine, better than milk of the poppy, how good it made him feel to have Arya here with him, warm from his hands, clean from his hands, fed from his hands.

She slid off him as he sat up to gather the bedclothes, but Jon was quick to pull her close again and tuck the sheets about her shoulders. “We should sleep,” he said, and smoothed a hand down her back. “There’s so much to speak on, tomorrow.”

Would that the winter night was long; would that tomorrow was slow to come! She made an unhappy little noise, agreement smeared to his skin, a hot press of her mouth.

He put his palm to her hip, but Arya was quick to take it, to tug his arm better around her, squirming until she was bonelessly comfortable pressed as she was against his side.

Here in the warm safe dark, Arya twined her fingers through his and asked in a trembling voice, “I’m so tired of war. Is it, is it bad? Just tell me that; I don’t think I can bear not knowing.”

His heart, his precious heart. His little sister, and even the darkness couldn’t hide a lie from her. “Aye,” Jon said, hating to say it. Hating to hurt her with a word. He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles until her body lost its tenseness again. Wordless reassurance, _This war won’t be like the rest, for I’ll be here with you through it._

To wound Arya was to wound himself. She said, so tired and unhappy and exhausted, “If I asked you, would you go away with me?”

It was a childish question, a child’s question. He wanted to answer it. He wanted her to ask for true. Jon turned on his side, tilted her head up, cupped her thin cheek, and brushed kisses across her face. A hundred, a thousand, until she was making little comforted noises, animal croons in the dark. 

She wouldn’t really ask. Arya loved the North, and all the people in it. Tomorrow, when he took her down to the deepest undercroft, where they kept the wight still chained and stirring in the frigid dark, she’d know why Jon had hushed her now rather than answer.

She wouldn’t ever ask, and Jon was filled with the fierce-burned gladness of it. The North was his home, too. Those people in it were his people. The wildlings had japed that Jon’s troth had been satisfied, but he had never japed it with them.

No son of Ned Stark’s, trueborn or base, could walk away and leave the land to freezing.

But Jon had known it long, and the truth brushed over him again and again, in every one of Arya’s looks, held tight in her touches, so careful like she was afraid Jon was some moon-swollen dream, ready to fall away in the very next breath.

There was nothing Jon loved more than this girl. He valued nothing above his little sister.

Not Winterfell, or his heavy regent’s crown. Not Westeros, not even the world. He couldn’t lie to himself, much less before a heart tree; the heavy weight of Arya in his arms, this girl already sliding into dreaming, was yet more sacred than that. To lie before her, even in his own mind, was unfathomable.

He loved her more than the weirdwood-whisper ghost of Bran. More than the half-memory half-scream of wild Rickon. More than Sansa in her high and distant towers, foreign as a bird he’d heard cry of but never seen.

More than the memory of Robb and their father, even.

If Arya asked him, they would go to White Harbor and by sword or by coin, find passage on the swiftest ship headed to the farthest wildest land. The warmest land, and he would keep her there and happy, until the Others learned to cross an unfrozen sea.

Jon had been full of fierce and terrible gladness to know that he wasn’t alone. That only Robb was lost to their pack forever. He loved his siblings, he did. But it wasn’t just for love of Bran, that dear and sweet little boy, that made Jon breathless with gratitude when the raven had spoken. 

Bran was Jon’s brother, and Jon knew that time and distance and strife hadn’t touched him for ill. He knew that Bran was growing to be a better man than him. He loved that boy, that child Jon had corrected in the practice yard, and let sit on his shoulders as they faced Arya and Robb in playful joust. That boy Jon had left sleeping unpeaceful despite his stillness in his bed. 

Robb’s will had made no mention of Bran. Jon’s own will held Bran’s name in his best, most careful hand.

_Come home_ , he thought to Bran wherever he was. _Come home_ , and he thought it with no little despair. _Come and let your sister see you. Let our wolves be brothers again. Come home and take back your crown._

Because Jon couldn’t be king in the North, not when he owed his loyalty elsewhere. Let some other of Ned Stark’s sons, the better of Ned Stark’s sons, take up that mantle. Jon had the dark and greedy heart of a bastard, no matter how much he played at nobility. 

Jon had his true duty back, and it was here, making a little nested home in the circle of his arms, murmuring and twitching in her sleep. _Come home_ , he thought to Bran even as he tucked Arya up under his chin, even as she laid her hand upon his heart.

Jon had his home back, taller and bruise-fragile and lovely and frightfully thin. He couldn’t spare even a corner of his heart to care for more than that.

### 

> And now good-morrow to our waking souls,  
>  Which watch not one another out of fear;  
>  For love, all love of other sights controls,  
>  And makes one little room an everywhere.  
>  Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,  
>  Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,  
>  Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.  
> 
> 
> My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,  
>  And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;  
>  Where can we find two better hemispheres,  
>  Without sharp north, without declining west?  
>  Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;  
>  If our two loves be one, or, thou and I  
>  Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.  
>  —John Donne, _The Good-Morrow_

**Author's Note:**

> There are so many good reunion fics for this ship, but I'm super greedy. I always want to see more, like what happens right after they meet again, when it's a little awkward and a little painful and still a little good. So I fished this straight out of the well of my id with a fishhook and some grungy string and put it up here for you. It's not perfect, and I reserve the right to go back and tweak, but it's close to my heart, which should count for something.
> 
> This fic wouldn't be anywhere near as good without these three potent things: 
> 
> 1\. tabacoychanel, who most graciously held my hand through writing this work, listened endlessly to me as I threw spaghetti at the wall and got frustrated when none of it stuck, and cheered me on like there were eighty of her instead of just a single one. Best beta and best cheerleader!!
> 
> 2\. The Jonrya Week tumblr and the lovely person (people?) who run it and work so tirelessly to generate hype and give us great events. They've collected such a wealth of Jonrya content over there, and any time I flagged when writing this, that was where I went to refresh myself. Ily, Jonrya Week tumblr!
> 
> 3\. And finally, you. Lovely reader, this work would be nothing without an audience, and knowing that out there were people just as thirsty as I was for intimacy, baths, and unresolved tension--well, it made six or seven worlds of difference in writing and publishing this, versus shoving that fished out chunk of myself back down the well again.
> 
> If you liked this work, or loved it, or it made you feel anything,pretty please let me know. Comment here (and I _will_ get around to responding), or email me at ao3throwaway27@gmail.com, or drop me a line on my [tumblr](https://mysticalmuddle.tumblr.com/). Every bit of feedback is a treasure <333
> 
> Thank you to everyone who reads/kudos'es/comments/bookmarks! Y'all keep the dreams alive. Please be excellent to yourself and to each other <3333
> 
> 12/20--Making minor edits ❤


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